by Michele Lang
She swallowed hard and stared miserably down at her shoes, as if she was about to puke on them. “Oh, so brilliant. But it was a mistake all the same. Remember why we are here.”
“We? I’m here because you came. Why are you here, Gisele? You speak of madness, but you are the one who ran into Poland when everybody here who could was running out on September first.”
She wiped at her eyes and looked straight at me. “I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I am sorry, Magda,” she said, so hoarse I could hardly understand her. “Please, forgive me.”
“Forgive you?”
“Me and my prophecies,” she said, and laughed again, a hiccupping little half cry. “Some good they do—I tell you the world is ending, and what are you supposed to do about it?”
“Whatever I can. You are making yourself sick, poor thing … we will do our best, that’s all we can do.”
“It’s just—” Gisele bit her lip and looked away.
“What now?”
“The trouble’s plain enough, Magduska. You don’t have the Book. If you had the Book, Raziel wouldn’t suffer so, and … our story would have a different end.”
The thought had occurred to me, quite often in fact since Raziel had come back. Our great-grandmama the Witch of Ein Dor herself had warned us: without The Book of Raziel, our lives were forfeit.
The Book had slipped through my fingers and into the hands of Adolf Hitler himself. And though the German Führer had no inherent magic of his own, it was my darkest fear that sooner or later he would find the magical key to unlocking our ancestral Book’s terrible power.
With my natural-born gifts I could summon demons to my side. But I could not bind them to do my bidding, to fight and defeat the German Army of mortals and magicals, not without the spells encoded in The Book of Raziel.
I ached for that Book, lusted for it. “How do we get it back, Gisele?” I whispered. “It must be in Berlin somewhere. And where is the original sapphire? Asmodel knows, but—”
“I don’t know,” Gisele said, her voice heavy with misery. “It’s not even the same Book anymore. Asmodel said the wizard Staff transformed it entirely before he died.”
“Gisele, I hate to say it, but…”
“But what?”
I gathered up my strength, then I spoke aloud what I had brooded over since the day I’d captured him. “Asmodel himself must be the key. To using the Book and bringing my full magic out.”
“No, Magdalena! I know that gleam you get in your eye.…”
“As if we weren’t in the most awful trouble already, Gisi. How much more do we have to lose, anymore? If I only had the Book,” I continued, “I could kill every Nazi in Poland inside of a long night. You think the attack on the rail yard was good? It would be just the beginning.”
Gisele ran to me then, and hugged me so tight I could hardly breathe. “But that is what I’m afraid of, what I came to warn you about. When you talk like this. Without the Book, we die. But with the Book … oh, Magduska…”
“Sweetheart,” I said, half buried under her tumbling chestnut locks. “Why did you come to Poland? Why would you tie my hands to keep me from fighting?”
She whispered low in my ear, as if we were surrounded by enemies—which, I suppose, we were. “I came to save the mothers, the babies. Warn them in time. It was foolish, I know, Asmodel tempted me and I gave in. I didn’t think you would come after me. I’ve probably killed you, too. And I fuss at you, while I still have time, because … I am afraid of what you might become.”
She released me from her embrace and fingered the locket hanging at her throat, as tears streamed steadily down her face. “This, my most precious possession. Now the home of an evil that could destroy you.”
I leaned against Viktor’s desk, half exhausted by Gisele’s misery. “I’m good as dead anyway. But that doesn’t mean I should give up now, right? In fact, if I stop fighting now I die a lot faster and messier, nu?”
One corner of her mouth tilted up as I imitated Yankel’s lilting Yiddish cadences. “All of this will go into the fire,” she said, looking around the office wildly. “All of Kraków. Everything. And so soon.”
“So let me kill the damned Nazis first. Give me Asmodel, little mouse. Let me have him, and Book or no Book we will have our victory.”
She blinked hard and her tears stopped flowing. “Some victories are not worth winning,” she whispered, the locket now clutched in her fist. “I will murder you with this locket if I give it over. I can’t do that.”
I kept my voice calm and reasonable. “We don’t have the Book. Instead, we have a million Nazis and more in Poland, on the march. And Asmodel. All you can do with him is hold him fast. But I…”
“All you will get with Asmodel is a dark victory, Magduska. A dark victory, indeed.” Gisele’s voice sounded muffled, trancelike, as though the words emanated from deep underground.
“A dark victory is better than none, my darling.”
“He’s the one who tempted me into rushing into Poland in the first place. I’m not as strong as you think I am, Magduska. Not so virtuous.”
I didn’t reply, only waited.
Instead of unclasping the chain, Gisele suddenly slipped it over her head in one fluid movement, her curls tangling in the golden links. “May God forgive me,” she managed to say through new tears. “Here, you have him. I’m not strong enough to hold him, I shouldn’t pretend. But don’t let him overpower you. That is no victory at all. No matter what happens, Magda, swear on my head that you will remember that.”
I hesitated, my fingers mere centimeters from the dangling locket. “You mean … don’t let him enter me?”
“I mean, do not let him become your master. If you do, you will surely defeat Hitler. But Asmodel will defeat you, and that would be the beginning of the end of everything.”
Well, I did what I had to do. I promised her, swore on everything holy and her very life that I would mind her words. I slipped the chain onto my own neck, and immediately felt the force of Asmodel’s enchained power, whispering to my own.
“I promise,” I whispered. But I knew even as I said it that my vow would be hell to keep.
* * *
After the attack on the rail yard, I feared the Nazi subjugation of mostly-conquered Kraków would escalate as the defense of Warsaw grew more desperate.
Sadly, I was right. I remember with painful clarity September fourteenth, the day Hans Frank, the new governor-general of the Protectorate of Poland, arrived with his motorcade into the heart of Kraków.
Warsaw had not yet fallen. There was as yet no true German protectorate: Poland was still fighting for her life, though she was weakening. After our destruction of the rail yard, the Nazis wanted to crush the partisan resistance in Kraków, and were so intent upon their success they sent their man early to set up shop sooner than any of us had expected.
He was a mortal man, the way Hitler was a mortal man. But he was important enough to be surrounded by a retinue of SS werewolves in their lupine form as he emerged from his Mercedes limousine at Wawel Castle, the historic seat of Polish government and a Teutonic pagan worship site to boot.
Using binoculars to search the face of Hans Frank and his men, Raziel, Viktor, and I watched them hoist the swastika over the castle. My blood ran cold at the sight of the werewolves. I knew such creatures well: a pack of them had tried to rip my throat out not long before, on a train station platform in Vienna.
Hitler had handpicked this man to ruthlessly suppress all partisan activity in Kraków and the surrounding districts, and to subject the Jews to a brutal regime of unprecedented severity.
It was our job to stop him.
I handed the binoculars to Raziel, but something about the expression on my face kept him looking at me. “Don’t do anything impulsive,” he said. Despite his words, his face remained serene.
“No, I won’t,” I said, but reluctantly. “I’ll take my time. I want this man to die so dramatically his end will be a warnin
g in itself. And that will take planning, not impulse.”
Raziel was in the middle of raising the binoculars to take another look at Hans Frank and his retinue. He lowered them slowly and stared at me for what seemed like a long time.
“You sound like a killer.”
He said the words softly, but they rattled me nonetheless. “This is war,” I replied. “You’ve pointed out the fact to me many times.”
Raziel nodded, then handed the binoculars to Viktor, not bothering to look again at the meaningless pomp of the ceremony at the Wawel. “I don’t know why,” he said softly, “but you have suddenly become a warrior who fights without hesitation. That is a victory for us, I think, and a big problem for Hans Frank.”
He reached out with his fingers and touched the dented locket now resting against my heart.
Viktor cleared his throat and raised the binoculars to look at the Wawel again. “So you mean to assassinate the governor-general himself,” he said.
Gisele’s warning still echoed in my mind, but I willed myself to ignore her words. “Hans Frank must die,” I replied.
* * *
The first thing we did after Frank arrived was to increase the exodus of refugees from Poland, as fast as we could. We had a lorry running from Kazimierz, Kraków’s Jewish district, to Yankel’s woods, and from there to the Polish border. As long as the Hashomer’s bribe money lasted, we’d smuggle the children out of the country. The greatest challenge so far was convincing the parents of the terrible danger their little ones faced if they stayed in Poland.
Eva had telephoned to beg us to slow down, but when I was done telling her about Frank’s arrival and what it meant, she ended up by pushing us to move faster. “We’ll find a place for them,” she said. “Somewhere.”
I could hardly bear to ask about Bathory, but he was never far from my mind, what with all the Nazis overrunning the city. And I couldn’t ask Eva about what Gisele had said, that she was tangled in the deceptions of a spy. Spying on who, and why?
Eva reassured me about Bathory, at least. “Don’t give up on him yet,” Eva said, her voice sounding weary across the line. “Uncle’s still in the hospital, poor old codger. But the doctor says to be patient: there’s still plenty of life in the old fellow. And I won’t rest until I find a doctor to save him, if this doctor won’t.”
So: it was too early to give up all hope. Eva was working on some improbable scheme or other that would lead to his release from the Vampirrat. The trail to Berlin had not yet grown cold, and she had no definitive information on his fate.
By now, over a thousand refugees, most of them children, had been spirited across the border and into Budapest. It was a drop in the bucket: over three million Jews lived in Poland, and then there were the Catholic priests and nuns, the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the seers and country witches, and all the others who would not survive a Nazi regime. Of course, given the Nazis’ murderous ideology, no ordinary Pole was safe: according to Gisele, Hitler’s plans included enslaving the entire nation.
The day after Governor Frank installed himself and his enormous retinue within the fortifications of Wawel Castle, a group of Hashomer and other partisan leaders met in Viktor’s office, above the pharmacist’s place on Miodowa Street.
It was me and Raziel, a big bear of a man named Levin for the Communists, and Viktor and his girlfriend Mina for the Hashomer. The Polish nationalist partisans had promised a representative, but none showed.
“There must be a thousand partisans holed up with that Catholic priest, in the salt mines,” Mina said wistfully. She tucked a lank lock of blond hair behind her ear. “It would be good to join forces with them.”
“Forget the miners,” Levin the Communist said in a low growl. “What are you going to do to Hans Frank?”
“It won’t be easy to get to him inside the Wawel,” Raziel said, his face imperturbable as ever.
“We will have to watch him and his retinue, see if he falls into a pattern of behavior,” Viktor said. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke dance lazily toward the ceiling. “Once we know what he is about, then we will know what action to take.”
“Don’t wait too long,” I warned, but the meeting was effectively over. These wary, brave, desperate people were looking to buy time more than anything else. Every day they stayed alive and out of the Gestapo’s clutches was a victory of sorts by itself.
Viktor muttered under his breath and took a deep drag on his cigarette, and Levin crossed his huge arms across his barrel chest and glared at me, not bothering to hide his hostility. The Nazis eagerly used Teutonic sorcery to achieve their war aims; in contrast, the Communists sought to gain supremacy over magic and religion by outlawing both.
Lenin had proclaimed religion the opiate of the masses; the Communists also believed that magic was the cyanide, administered by rootless cosmopolitans like myself. Instead of working magic, the Soviets studied it as a science, conducted horrifying, barely secret experiments at the Institute for Brain Research in Leningrad. They studied the subtle energies of magic to control it, subjugate it, root it out of the greater Soviet, for the good of the proletariat.
Viktor was right. These people didn’t have the luxury of returning from the dead; I was the only magical in the room. If anyone was going to take supernatural risks, it was going to have to be me, because death was surely part of the plan.
It was beyond dangerous. Gisele had warned me as clearly as she could. But that did not change the fact we had to stop Hans Frank somehow. And I already knew, no further investigation required, that the only way to stop the governor-general was to kill him.
“Let me see what I can do,” I said.
* * *
I began that very night. Once I had slipped out of Kraków and returned to the forest, I called on my personal creature, Leopold. I had inadvertently created him the first time I had died, but I had never regretted making that particular mistake. Leo had become a trusted ally, and I was in no way above using an imp in the service of the greater good.
I called him, and Leo came instantly, bony as a starved, wet cat, his neat little whiskers bristling in anticipation of action. “Mama, shall we fight?”
“Not yet.” We met near the river; by now, the young volunteers from the Hashomer had burrowed a series of all but invisible dugouts in the underbrush behind Yankel’s hut. Some two hundred people could live in our camp now, as they waited to be evacuated by Viktor’s lorry, but such was the Hashomer’s skill in hiding them that except for the smoke from the cooking fires, the place looked more deserted than when we had first arrived.
I thought of the last man I had killed face-to-face, the Nazi sorcerer Staff, who had come to hunt me down and who now reposed deep in the earth, beyond our reach. “I need to send you on a mission, Leo, dear.”
He puffed out his chest and stroked the base of his skull with the tips of his long bony fingers. “A mission! I will do it, Mama, do it gladly.”
“There is a new man in the town, an evil man. Hans Frank is his name; he is the new governor-general of this part of conquered Poland. He arrived in quite a rush; I think they sent him sooner than they had planned, because we partisans have been giving the Germans lots of trouble.”
“Hm. Evil. I like the taste of him already. Yes…”
“Yes. He has installed himself in Wawel Castle. It is heavily guarded; no mortal being can get in and out again alive, not even me. I need you to sneak inside, find out what you can about this dreadful man.”
He mulled over my words, walking back and forth on the cool mossy bank of the stream in the moonlight. Leo paused, and looked over a scrawny shoulder, back at me. “Information? What kind, Mama?”
“Anything, Leo. But it seems to me you are a specialist of passion, of those things that quicken the blood of mortal men.”
He shot me a knowing look, and laughed deep in his chest, a hoarse little growl. We both knew he was born of my primal fury, that he was a stray spark of my own turbulent soul. My rage was our
fundamental link, my grief for Gisele’s fate the connection that made it so easy for me to call upon him at my need.
Leo would know Hans Frank’s pleasures and hatreds when he saw them.
“Seek entrance to his mind through his dreams,” I said. “You are an air spirit—it should be easy to meet him in the sphere of dreams.”
“I will see if he takes baths,” Leo said, his voice soft as he spoke his thoughts aloud. “Many a man, alone and naked, has waking dreams in the tub.…”
“Now, that is good thinking,” I said. “Do you need a spell to send you along?”
“No, Mama. Your fervent desire is spell enough. If you could … well, say a little prayer for me?”
I smiled. I was no Yankel and did not have the power to raise blue fire with the force of my calling to God. But the simplest prayers are often the strongest; I asked the Almighty to watch over Leo and bless his ways.
“Go in peace, little imp,” I said. “Watch out for sorcerers’ wards, werewolves, and the valkyrie.”
He shrugged, winked at me, and shot into the sky. He quickly disappeared, like a star falling upward. It was going to be a long night, waiting for him.
* * *
And yet I did not have to wait long. I had taken the first watch and he surprised me by landing on the ground in front of me. “Oh, Mama, is he a nasty one,” he trilled, without bothering to say hello.
Raziel was standing watch, too. I was glad it was not a Hashomer who stood with me, for I knew how deeply Leopold’s sudden appearance would disturb most of them. “Hello, Leo,” I said, my voice kept to a low whisper. “Tell it.”
“He is a brutish bastard, and his wife is even worse. She has already come in and has announced to everyone that she is the queen of Poland. He hates her, all right, but he hates the Poles and Jews even worse.”
“Well, he’s a good Nazi,” I said. “That’s what he’s supposed to do.”
“He enjoys it though,” Leo said, crouching at my feet like a little hairless lion, a naked tailless cat with a bristly mustache. “So: hates wife, Jews, Poles, and Police Chief Krueger, whoever that is.”
