Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  “Attila, darling, our prey comes into our lair tonight!” Erszebet’s scratchy husk of a voice cackled with glee. “Look at that man!”

  “The girl smells of death and magic,” Attila whined, his body shifting noisily in the creaky leather armchair. Bloodlust vampires suffer from an often fatal lack of control, and I wondered at his current degree of madness.

  Uncle Jansci said nothing, but sat as still as an enormous Carpathian mountain peak. His silence frightened me the most, for while the other two creatures were readable, his placidity hid his beliefs and motives. I could not sense Jansci’s soul at all.

  Despite my nerves I kept my focus, and drew my fear deep inside of me, a hard little pellet hidden in my heart. “I come with the prospect of money and good luck, eternal ones.”

  Erszebet trailed a bony hand over one meager, exposed breast; I dared a peek, saw her licking her lips, and realized that already she had half surrendered to her own bloodlust. Raziel and I were both in deep trouble, and I had not yet even explained my presence.

  I breathed a whisper of protection around Raziel and me, just enough to inflict magical hurt if Erszebet lunged for Raziel’s throat. I moved a little closer to him, could sense the slow, steady beating of his heart through the pulse in his fingers.

  “Hitler will take Poland within days,” I said. “He has his own bloodlust. It is war.”

  To my surprise, it was Jansci who answered me. “Poland will succumb immediately, like a lamb. Hitler will drink, be satisfied. There will be no war.”

  “I wish it were so, but it is not to be, ancient one. The Poles have vowed to fight—I went to their embassy not twenty-four hours ago, and they were already on alert. They believe the British and the French will honor their treaties and counterattack.”

  “The French.” Jansci’s words dripped with contempt. “Mortal child, you were not born to witness the carnage of the Great War, what murderous idiocy you people are capable of. The French will not attack Hitler’s army. Nor will the British. They will speak fine words, and condole the Polish people. And they will hold back while Hitler and his dogs rip out the throat of Poland.”

  “The great Eastern Werewolf Pack has indeed sworn fealty to Hitler as their pack leader supreme. Surely you don’t mean to take orders from them?”

  Jansci growled, an impotent, curdled roar of fury. I threw more energy into my circle of protection and it began to hum.

  “You’re Bathory’s girl,” Erszebet said, her imperious voice at odds with the shifting red silk and her restless, probing hands that slid over her bony body. “You expect a condemned vampire’s name to give you safe passage here? And your companion travels under nobody’s protection at all.”

  “I travel under my own protection,” Raziel said. His voice was as smooth as Imperial Tokaji Aszú wine, and I could feel the corded muscles in his arms under the light suit that he wore.

  I feared for him.

  I returned my attention to Erszebet and her companions, on my guard for Raziel as well as for myself. “We have no need of protection. We come only to say this: the vampire race is too ancient and illustrious to bow to slavering dogs. I offer you magic, my own magic and my sister’s, to fight the menace of Hitler. We could stop him even now. Terrible as he is, Hitler is only a man.”

  “A man with brutal magics at his disposal,” Jansci said. Did I detect a glimmer of regret in his voice?

  Attila hissed, “Do not speak ill of the glorious German Reich. Our nation stands with our Aryan brothers. Scum such as you will be swept away and Hungary, like Germany, will once more be pure.”

  He could contain his bloodlust no more, and with a snarl of rage Attila hurled himself at Raziel’s neck. Raziel slipped and ducked, and my wards held. Attila bounced backward as if thrown.

  “I have brutal magics as well.” I held my hands outward to strengthen the spell of protection I had woven. “I am a Lazarus, the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter. I was born with the ability to summon, and I will call the wretched soul right out of your body, Attila, if you insist.”

  Attila sent up a huge wail of hungry frustration. His fangs flashed yellow in the dim light, long and thin like a cobra’s fangs, different from the fangs of a mature vampire. Distracted by them, I was not so prepared for Erszebet’s attack.

  She surprised me by gliding to the edge of my protection and with her long bony fingers parting the wards like a bamboo curtain. “The Reich bought our fealty with magic, little lamb chop,” she said, and laughed as she slid between Raziel and me. Her sharp-looking fingernails scraped up the side of Raziel’s arm and along the base of his neck up to his jaw. She played with his collar and tie as Raziel stood silent, poised to strike, waiting only for my word.

  I ignored my rush of fear, and instead I whispered the first verse of the Testament of Solomon. A blue flame licked over the entire surface of Erszebet’s body, as if I had lit a gas stove and thrown her onto the burners.

  She shrieked and drew back, but I would not let her flee. I spoke softly over her whimpers of pain. “The magic is Hitler’s, not yours,” I said, so quietly that the other vampires could hardly hear me. I leaned forward; I could smell the coppery blood on her breath. “Erszebet, come to me.”

  Her soul was old and ropy, coiled tight and hard to unwind. But I whispered her name again and again without mercy, and she scrambled backward as I tugged hard at her soul, to show her how I could yank it clear out of her body. “I come in Bathory’s name, to offer you freedom from the dogs.”

  I could kill Erszebet now, but that would solve nothing. The fetid magic the vampires held in reserve abruptly strengthened, and now stank of vomit and rotting cheese. I had come to parley, but the magic in the Vampirrat could not be disarmed without a brutal, magical fight.

  I threw Erszebet’s soul back to her, and she staggered out of my wards. She collapsed against the cushions, her upper body now completely exposed, blue-white like snow.

  “You reject my parley,” I said, “and so it must be that I will save my old master myself, alone, and when he returns he will supplant you all.”

  Her expression, surprised and embarrassed, drew a short, hard laugh out of me, and I went on. “Your magic is weak, for it must travel far, all the way from Berlin, and it cannot withstand mine.”

  Jansci’s laugh mocked my pride. “You might withstand the magic the Reich has given us, but you are still a mortal! Only a mortal. You presume too much—your magic is not infinite. You will be crushed by Hitler and his mortal army.”

  I resented Jansci for his being right, but his tut-tutting gave me time to get Raziel out of their lair alive without having to kill them all and incite a war with the Budapest vampires.

  I bowed and inclined my head, showing a respect to them that they did not deserve, but I was willing to give it in order to keep them away from Raziel. “You may be right, Uncle. But can you afford to be wrong?” I dared to catch his eye and smile, a gesture of bravado so futile that Jansci smiled back.

  I began to walk backward, and after glancing at me in surprise, Raziel backed away too, still in a fighting stance.

  Halfway across the huge, barren ballroom, I paused. “I bid you peace, vampires of Budapest. But I will claim Bathory for myself. In the end, you will swear fealty to him when he returns, or there will be war.”

  “You declare war as recklessly as Hitler himself.” And Jansci’s smile widened under the boar-bristle of his mustache, the ends of his fat fangs peeking out from underneath.

  A low hiss rose from the divan where Erszebet still sprawled. “Jansci, she must not leave. It is war with her kind, or with the Germans.”

  “No, lovely one,” I said, my voice containing a note of genuine surprise. “I have no particular quarrel with you. I am dismayed you refuse to save Bathory; it is always disillusioning to see strong ones play so small. But my true enemy is in Berlin. Do what you must. But I am not yours to claim, nor is my companion.”

  Out of nowhere, Attila again hurled himself at Ra
ziel, and this time he was too fast for Raziel to duck. My wards ripped with the force of his assault and hung in spiderweb tatters as the two of them rolled over and over on the floor, the vampire’s mouth opened huge with piranha-fangs aimed at Raziel’s bare neck.

  “Attila!” I called his soul with all of my power. It was as if he was a ravening cur and I had yanked him by a choke collar: his head jerked backward and he bit his own tongue with the violence of my counterstrike.

  He reached up to pull at his neck but my invisible grip was powerful at such a short distance. I took a deep, centering breath, and formed my energy around my word of power:

  No. No. No.

  “You will not have him, Attila, you will not have me, Attila, back, Attila, back, back.” With every repetition of the vampire’s true name I tightened my hold over him.

  Raziel wrenched himself free and caught the vampire with a sharp left hook as he swung away from the monster’s long, grasping fingers. Attila lay on his side on the parquet, mouthful of fangs gaping, bleeding from his nose and tongue.

  “Let’s go,” Raziel said as he massaged his bleeding knuckles with his other hand.

  I stared at the freely dripping blood as hard as did the vampires. My Raziel now could bleed.

  “I’ve said everything I came here to say.” I looked up, caught Erszebet’s gaze and held it, hard and without mercy. An unwilling smile flickered over her lips, and I savored her admiration like a sip of a fine red vintage.

  I released her and bowed to Uncle Jansci, the only vampire who had treated me with the respect due to a loyal lieutenant of one of their own. “I salute your chivalry, Uncle, and I offer you my protection should you need it against my enemies, the Fascists.”

  I darted a glance at Attila, still writhing in agony on the floor. The vile stench of the alien magic still hung in the air, and I rubbed at my nose with the back of my hand.

  “I’m done, Raziel. Let’s get out of here. You know, your jaw is all bruised.”

  Raziel met my gaze. For the first time I saw uncertainty in those warm, brown eyes, an amazed frustration at his mortal limitations reflected in them.

  I turned away from his disconcerting gaze. I nodded at Jansci; he regally inclined his head in farewell. I made a big show of turning my back and exposing my neck to them as we went. I demanded my due of respect, and would have it from them through my own strength, if not from their own code of honor.

  Imre met us at the entrance. He said nothing, only muttered under his breath and opened the heavy wooden door. But before I stepped through the door and into the sticky-hot Budapest night, Imre grabbed my hand and kissed it twice, first formally on the knuckles, then long and passionately on the pulse point of the wrist.

  Our eyes met. “The Vampirrat won’t lift a finger to save him, Lazarus. But you have crazy courage, you walk into the fire. Do it, save Bathory, if you can,” he whispered.

  But I could not deny my doubts. War was close upon us now. I could no longer even pretend to stop it. The only way I could survive was to win.

  3

  “So much for Bathory, my poor count,” I murmured. We had made our way far enough down the street for me to be sure we had survived the Vampirrat of Budapest.

  A long line of streetlamps shone all the way down the Buda hills. “Come on home—you must be starving,” I said. “At least it is not too late for me to save you.”

  Raziel startled me with a short burst of hard laughter. “My dear,” he finally said, after he had gotten his voice back under control, “you were too late the day you were born. Some things you cannot change, no matter what you do or wish.”

  “I swore to Gisele I would try.” My grief came out sounding peevish. “And how can I not?”

  I could not bear to look at him, to see in his face the knowledge that I had failed again. Instead I walked, slowly and aimlessly, down from Rose Hill in old Buda, toward the Danube River. It was a very long walk to Dohány Street, but I was determined to take every step, even if it took the rest of the night.

  “Magda,” Raziel began.

  “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me.”

  “Sometimes the thing must be said aloud.”

  “But I already know.” I kept walking, walking, the endless night stretching into nothingness around us in every direction.

  “The worst will happen, Magda.”

  I shook my head. “You have fallen, you are a man. The worst has already happened.” I took in the sight of him strolling next to me, shorn of his essence and his wings, fedora tipped rakishly to the side as if he had not a care in the world.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He straightened the fedora, and I saw how tightly he clenched his bruised jaw. “I chose to choose, if you follow my meaning. Now the Almighty is hidden from me; now I speak Hungarian and Hebrew, and not the angelic speech all living creatures understand. I’ve lost my language and my wings, yes. But it’s worth it to me, Magduska. I am no more a messenger, I am a man. Now I am free to act, to take a side, to do what I know to do.”

  I considered his words. “You see falling from Heaven as an improvement?” I could not keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  His eyes darkened and he shrugged. “I could not bear it any longer,” he said. “Safe but bound to do nothing, a mere messenger. Doomed to watch only, as you, your sister, and the world descend into Hell. Perhaps I am a traitor to Heaven, well, so be it. I chose love over fear—I will stand by what I have done.”

  “You were made for more than minding me!” I blurted out. I couldn’t help myself.

  He smiled, then winced and rubbed his sore jaw. “That is true. That is why I came.”

  I wanted to say so much more, about love and gratitude and the waste that was evil. But instead I put Raziel’s angelic patience to the test. “Asmodel is the only advantage I’ve still got. And as you have so kindly pointed out in so many words, I have failed over and over trying everything else.”

  Raziel took off his fedora and ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “Asmodel? But—”

  “No, stop. Hear me out. He knows, Raziel. He knows what Hitler plans to do, and he knows the Germans’ weaknesses.”

  “But he will not give you anything, not unless you pay too high a price.”

  “I tempted him to overreach before, I can do it again. Somehow. Maybe if I invite him into my body to possess me like he wanted. I’m sure you will be strong enough to make sure he does not ruin me.”

  Raziel hesitated, stopped. We stood together in the street, the mists of the Budapest night rising all around us.

  “I know that demon well, know him as a brother,” he finally said, so low that at first I thought I only imagined I had heard him speak. “I could not beat him, Magda, not even with the celestial power of my wings. We have battled over the reach of time, and never have I fought him to any more than a draw.”

  “But I don’t intend to fight him. I want to enlist him to our cause.”

  Raziel took a half step backward and laughed. His thick hair shone in the light of the streetlamps. “That is madness. He has descended far in evil since the beginning, Magduska. He wishes only harm upon mankind, and his essence is cunning.”

  He replaced the fedora on his head, regarded me with his wise, sad eyes, and he shook his head. “I have seen many things in my time, Magduska, things terrible and wonderful. And Asmodel has seen more. Knows more.”

  I knew nothing in comparison, but I wanted to believe that my ignorance could be strength. I reached for his hand and threaded my fingers through his own. “The Lord Himself watches over fools, my love.”

  “You are too ambitious a fool, Magduska. Don’t do it.”

  Bathory was beyond my reach. Raziel was right—even talking with the ancient demon was dangerous. But I had to deal with Asmodel, one way or another. I was running out of time and choices.

  * * *

  We stumbled our way home, across the Chain Bridge from Buda into Pest. The unbelievable reality of Hitler’s imminent
invasion would manifest in a day or two. If I wanted to get Gisele out of Hungary, I had to do it fast.

  When I turned the key in the lock and finally made it alive through my front door, Gisele was awake and sitting at the kitchen table. The poor girl looked ghastly. She had been tasked with the job of guarding the paprika tin, and the job was almost too much for her.

  I tried to ignore the circles under her eyes and her slumped shoulders. “Gisele, the time of death is not today, even by the demon’s reckoning. Come, time for breakfast, I’m taking you out again.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Magduska darling. You must be exhausted.” Gisele sounded desolate, already beaten. And peevish and resentful too: a mood that did not match my sister’s soul in any way.

  What had Asmodel done to her in the dark night she had endured alone, guarding him?

  I tried to disregard her haunted eyes, her tangled hair. I could not. “Are you all right? Has that creature tormented you?”

  She waved my question away with a little flick of her hand. “He cannot torment me more than what I see in my second sight.”

  After a long moment, I said, “You need a bit of fresh air. I will take you to the Mephisto Café this morning instead of the Istanbul.” I could not bear to acknowledge out loud the reality of her continued visions.

  I also did not confirm what I knew she was worrying about: that my encounter with the Budapest council had gone so badly that I preferred to take my chances at the demons’ café, rather than at my customary café of the vampires.

  She gasped, and two livid spots shone on her cheeks as if I had slapped her twice. “The war is indeed come, then, if you must trust me with the local demons.”

  And with the father of them all, the terrible, barely restrained Asmodel. She didn’t have to say a word about him—I could see the awful strain of keeping up my wards etched in every shadow on her face.

  I also ached all over from weariness. Raziel and I exchanged a long, silent glance; he looked fresh and rested, and except for the bruise Attila had raised on his jaw, none the worse for wear despite our endless night. He was a man for certain, but was that all that Raziel was?