Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  That was interesting, and I mentally filed away that information. “What does he love, though, Leo? A man’s love reveals his secrets. And we are looking for any weakness in his defenses.”

  Leo shrugged; despite his origins, he did not know or understand all that much about mankind and daily life. “Well, chess.”

  Raziel leaned forward, suddenly alert. “What?”

  “The man is crazy about chess, thinks it is a metaphor for the universe or something. He is fond of his children.…”

  My stomach did a slow, sick flip. “He has children?” For some reason this information sickened me, I suppose because it gave me some reason to regret his assassination.

  “Oh yes, five children. Five! The youngest is just a baby still.”

  Five. Even though I was still on sentry duty, the news made me sit down to catch my breath.

  “Pfft.” Leopold was not impressed. “They’ve been setting Jewish children on fire in synagogues for the last two weeks. Some people need killing, Mama—it’s the nicest thing you could do for his little poppets.”

  I thought of my own dead father and begged to differ, but I said nothing aloud.

  “This is war,” Raziel said as gently as he could. “He wants to kill every man, woman, and child he can get under his control, Magda.”

  The world would be a better place without such a one as Hans Frank in it, but killing him was going to exact a price from me. Still I could not delude myself that this man, devoted slave to Adolf Hitler, was incapable of any evil my sister had foretold.

  “Chess,” I mused. I reached down and scratched Leopold’s long, pointy ears in thanks. “Time for our first move.”

  15

  When morning came I took the refugees’ lorry into Kraków to meet with Viktor at Hashomer headquarters. We needed to put our pawns, knights, and rooks on the board.

  I rode with a small band of Hashomer, a load of refugee children, and Raziel, bouncing in the back of the truck. I tried to paste a serene, angelic expression on my face, but Raziel knew me too well to believe I actually met my fate with equanimity.

  We spoke in Hungarian, which gave us a little privacy in the middle of that crowd of soldiers and frightened Polish schoolchildren. “He is the same as the wizard Staff that I killed,” I said. “I know. But it is one thing to fight for your own life, another to plot the death of a human being in cold blood.”

  Raziel sighed. “If you have an enemy, it is better to know him well.” I could tell he thought of Asmodel. “Hans Frank has come to kill you if he can.”

  “I wish I could take the long view,” I said. I tried to tell myself I was tough enough to survive losing Raziel, or even Gisele. I wanted to become as unyielding in my ambitions as Asmodel. But I knew better.

  Raziel hesitated. “Time means something different to me, perhaps,” he said, his body moving with a sinuous grace as the truck bumped along the country roads. “But love is the prime mover. Magduska, God is love, and love will lead you through the valley of the shadow and back out again.”

  “Sometimes love is too beautiful to drag into the shadow of death,” I said, with a sigh I couldn’t help. I resisted the urge to stroke the back of his hand, because we were with so many other people, and also because I would bounce right out of the lorry if I let go.

  Instead, I considered the next move in our deadly game.

  * * *

  My German was the best. At the meeting, that was the excuse we gave to Levin and the Communists in the end; Viktor, poor man, did what he could to minimize the fact of my magic to his rationalist comrades. But they weren’t fooled. We all just pretended.

  Together, we concocted a plan that, we hoped, would not only lead to the assassination of Herr Frank, but also, before we were done, would destroy his reputation.

  For his part, Levin hid my Jewishness from the professors who organized our trap. It made our collaboration rather less complicated. He explained I was a Hungarian patriot who sought to aid Poland in her distress. I suspect the Poles knew better, or at least suspected, but we all played our parts flawlessly, the better to fight our common and detested enemy.

  It had been my father, a shrewd man who lived by his wits in a magical, dangerous world, who had taught me as a child to play chess. That thought comforted me as Chana gussied me up in whatever finery she could scrounge—it would not do to meet the governor-general looking like a scullery maid or a wood hob.

  “You are a princess from a fairy tale,” she murmured in her homey Yiddish as she pinned a pretty little salmon pink netted cloche in my hair.

  I thought of the Grimm tales I used to read, with their legions of imprisoned and murdered princesses, and I sighed. “I hope I’m more like Judith with Holofernes.”

  Chana, a devout woman, beamed at me, and held out a pair of real silk stockings to wear. “A woman of valor…”

  I sighed again; those verses in Proverbs had been written by the great King Solomon, he who had succumbed to the lord of demons before he fell. “Chana,” I began, and trailed off; the lump in my throat was suddenly too big to speak around.

  Chana looked up sharply; she had heard the change in my voice. “Remember your Sh’ma,” she said, steel in her voice. “And don’t be afraid.”

  Despite the kindness in Chana’s voice, my gut clenched. The Sh’ma was the prayer observant Jews recited in the moments before their deaths. Chana wanted me to be ready to die the proper way.

  But the Sh’ma is also the prayer I use to strengthen my power of summoning, though Chana had no way of knowing that. I planned to remember the Sh’ma long before my life’s end.

  “Your daughter Ruzka is a lucky girl,” I managed to say, my voice husky. “Her mama is a lioness.”

  Chana enfolded me in her meaty arms; I let her mother me, but not for longer than a moment. I had grown unused to mothering.

  I pulled away from her embrace and cleared my throat. “Let’s go down; the car is waiting.” I insisted that Viktor serve as my driver; with his long, lanky figure and his icy blue eyes he looked less Jewish than the other Hashomer men.

  I never found out how in heaven the Hashomer had organized the sleek, beetle-black Mercedes limousine; it looked suspiciously like the car in which the Nazi governor himself had arrived in Kraków.

  We pulled out of the alley behind the pharmacist on Miodowa Street, and the Mercedes clattered over the cobblestones, not to Wawel but to the Literary Café by the university.

  Governor-General Frank could not resist the enigmatic invitation of the Baroness Erszebet Bathory, of the Hungarian Carpathians, to meet him for chess and conversation in the glorious language of the Fatherland, High German.

  The summer before, I had done more than my share of conversing in German while battling Nazi wizards, casting for Bavarian country witches, and confronting the sent specter of Adolf Hitler himself. After much practice under fire, I now spoke German tolerably well.

  “Do you think he said yes to the chess or to the baroness?” I asked the back of Viktor’s head as the car lurched out of the Jewish quarter of Kraków.

  “A bit of both,” Viktor said, after a pause. “The combination was obviously tempting. The governor has entered a firestorm, the place is not even pacified yet.”

  “Any port in a storm then, even a Hungarian noblewoman with a vampire’s pedigree.”

  “That only added to her mysterious appeal, Magda.”

  Too quickly, we arrived at the café, just after sunset. I checked my lipstick and hairdo in the compact I carried: the effect was, I hoped, charmingly careless. I wanted to look the part of a frivolous, pleasure-seeking noblewoman who got a perverse little thrill from meeting the new governor alone, without his overbearing, recently pregnant wife.

  Viktor shifted in his seat to face me. “I will be in the alley,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “When you are done, get out fast.”

  “If I’m not out fast, get away yourself,” I said. When he began to protest, I raised one gloved hand to stop him. �
��This is no time or place for chivalry, Viktor. Get out alive and we will meet again.”

  He tipped his cap to me, a devoted servant to his lady. “You are being watched,” he murmured, then said something in Polish I didn’t understand as the passenger door swung open.

  It was Karol, the university professor (and enthusiastic Fascist) who had arranged our meeting during chess night at the Literary Café. “Fräulein,” he said affably in German, as he reached for my hand to kiss. “Welcome to Kraków.”

  His German was wooden and Polish accented. My spirits rose: my German was better than that. I looked down my nose at him, copying my employer Bathory’s distant, cordial politesse. “Charmed, I am sure, Professor,” I said, my lips pursed, my voice high and breathless. “Has the honorable governor already arrived? I am oh so very sorry for the delay.”

  “No, Baroness, but we have had word he is on his way.”

  I hid my dismay with a slow, sweet smile. I had hoped to surprise him as he sat; this way, he and his entourage would have the advantage of the front door should matters go sour immediately.

  “Excellent,” I said. “I hope you have a big, fine chessboard. I considered bringing my own, but it is antique and a gift from my dear, beloved father.”

  The professor bent to kiss my hand again. I did not know which disgusted me more, his servile obsequiousness to me or his ill-disguised joy at meeting the German ruler of his conquered city.

  “I have a number of suitable sets, my dear baroness. And we have set out some refreshments in honor of your meeting with Governor-General Frank.”

  “I hope you have not invited half the university to crowd the poor man, Herr Professor. I promised our governor-general that the meeting would be discreet.”

  The expression froze on the professor’s face; I could see the hard clenching of his thin jaw. “Of course, Madame Baroness,” he said, his voice sounding stiff and formal. “I would not presume to intrude.”

  “Very well,” I replied, favoring him with a tight-lipped, vaporous, and aristocratic little smile. We passed over the marble threshold and into the café.

  I was used to the grand, gilded cafés of Budapest, with vaulted ceilings and marble everywhere, so this sober, more modest establishment perversely disappointed me. I wanted the governor to meet his end surrounded by the most decadent, meaningless trappings of his ultimately impotent power. But I would have to make do with this merely handsome place.

  The professor installed me in a narrow back room, with dark wood paneling and antlers on the wall, in imitation of a Prussian hunting lodge, I suppose. He offered me pastry and coffee, which I refused as prettily as I could. A quick scan of the room revealed a back door as well as a front; whether it led to the kitchen, a closed-up storeroom, or a WC I could not tell.

  I sat with my back to the wall so that I could see the governor and his entourage as they arrived. If things got bad enough I figured I could escape into death, hopefully to return again—but death was no easy escape to make.

  A great commotion at the door distracted me from my thoughts, and I almost knocked over the chess pieces arranged for me by the professor. I rose to my feet, tried to keep my knees from knocking together, and forced myself to remain in character: demure, and excited, in a dainty, ladylike way.

  I looked up from the chess pieces to see the governor-general, Hans Frank, filling up the alcove with his bulk and that of his great entourage. He was not a large man, but his bombastic lawyer’s ego filled the entire café and sucked every molecule of life and joy out of it with his presence. He strutted into the room, drunk on his own importance, his exalted place in history as the ruler of the conquered Polish slave people, and he surrounded himself with sycophants and bootlickers, individuals who reflected his greatness back upon him like subservient mirrors.

  It was bad luck that day. I had hoped to lure Frank to a more discreet and clandestine meeting, a potential seduction that would have left more leeway for an escape. But he not only had his assistants with him, he also had with him the dreadful leader of the Gestapo, Krueger. And he had the same honor guard of werewolves protecting his person as were with him the day he had arrived.

  I feared the werewolves would sniff me out. I was in grave danger indeed; I had taken the precaution of raising a glamour over my features, to confuse and dazzle any mortal that gazed upon my face. But I feared the curs would find out my magic by smell.

  I made a great show of smiling and welcoming them, as if the café were my personal domain. “Welcome, dear gentlemen, welcome!”

  Hans Frank’s fat jowls jiggled as he leaned forward and muttered pleasantries in a German marked by a strong Bavarian accent. His rival and associate Krueger stood unsmiling to his right, unwilling to acknowledge me in any way. His stony silence was most unnerving.

  The werewolves clustered around Frank, fur bristling. The one standing nearest to me looked up warily at me, blinking hard as he scanned my face. Stupidly, I had not thought to mask my scent, but Chana had powdered and perfumed me as part of her ladylike attentions. Her feminine wiles had saved me.

  The werewolf sneezed and shook his big ugly head. Apparently Chana’s rose-scented perfume did not appeal to him, and it had also confused him enough to hide my identity, at least for the moment.

  The werewolves had worried me, but I understood immediately that Krueger was the most dangerous. He glared at the locket around my neck, the one in which Asmodel was imprisoned. I knew it looked out of place on the neck of a baroness, but it could not be helped.

  “Cheap little trinket, isn’t it,” I said with a simper. “My English governess gave it to me when I was a tiny child.”

  “You speak English?” Krueger growled.

  “Oh, no, I was a dreadful student, couldn’t keep all those strange words in my head. ‘Jitterbug’—ha ha!”

  Krueger wasn’t amused, but at least, I could see, he now underestimated me. With a bored sigh, he dismissed me as a brainless socialite. He rudely shoved past Frank to get to the big oak bar that curved along the back wall. “I want a drink,” he barked at the terrified, pale-as-milk bartender, the only man with a grain of sense in the entire place.

  “Please, sit, sit,” I purred at the governor-general. “Next to me. I trust you are comfortable in the Wawel?”

  He bent to kiss my hands. “Dear lady, it is a marvelous castle. A Teutonic stronghold worthy of the Führer himself.”

  “Splendid. I am so glad. I was excited to hear you love chess. So did my late papa. I could not resist the temptation of inviting you, and was thrilled you would venture out to meet me.”

  He smirked, and with a great manly show motioned for me to take my seat. He was in full uniform, his hat jammed low on his sweaty forehead, his gut straining against the belted, double-breasted jacket of his dress uniform.

  I sank into my seat, barricaded behind a phalanx of white chess pieces. Frank, with great ceremony, removed his hat and lowered his ample behind on the chair opposite mine. The wolves crowded around, their yellow eyes darting around the low-ceilinged little room, looking for danger.

  “Shall we play, Hans?” I asked, lingering over the words as if I was aware of my boldness in making the proposition.

  Frank hesitated; the silence was full of menace. Then he forgave me my impertinence. “Certainly, fräulein,” he said, ignoring my nobility the way I had not acknowledged his title of governor-general.

  My smile widened. “You move first. You are the black.”

  Hans Frank’s style of play revealed his character. He played with an unsubtle brutality, aggressive from the first move, without finesse or calculation. His virtue was his lack of cunning: his drive to conquer was undisguised.

  I was not very good at chess; for me, the game was a sentimental Ouija board that I used to conjure memories of my father, lost to death forever. I defended myself against more effective players as long as I could; I sometimes won in spite of myself, for I quickly lulled all but rank beginners into complacency.

>   Besides, this time I was terribly distracted; I was watching Krueger put away shot after shot of Jägermeister and wondered if he was well shellacked after so much liquor or somehow impervious to it. Despite this, I had a stroke of luck and by accident threatened Frank’s queen.

  He saw the danger before I did. “My queen is in peril,” he muttered, and our gazes locked over the pieces. “One queen holds a dagger to the other.”

  I held his gaze, and he froze. “Hans,” I crooned under my breath, like a black widow spider weaving a web of sound. “The queen is more powerful, yes. But you should see to your king. When you lose your king, oh black king, you lose the game altogether.”

  He tried to respond, found to his immense surprise that he could not. “Farewell, butcher,” I muttered under my breath in Hungarian, and with all my power I squeezed.

  His eyes bulged, but I held him fast, and I squeezed and squeezed until his soul flickered out and he sat dead at the table.

  I worked his lungs like a bellows long after he was dead, propped up his lifeless body until my strength began to waver. “Why, Governor,” I said as loudly as I could, but breathless. “It is your move.”

  The werewolf sitting at my feet lifted his muzzle from his paws and growled to himself. “Governor?” I said again, and then I let him slump forward onto the chessboard, and I screamed.

  The room exploded into pandemonium. Krueger leapt forward, brandishing his pistol, snarling filthy curses in German as he yanked the dead governor-general backward in his chair. The Nazi’s dead eyes bulged outward as he stared into nothingness. No matter what happened now, at least the murderous Nazi bastard would kill children no more.

  Krueger kicked the nearest werewolf savagely in the face. “Stupid dog!” he screamed, his voice hysterical and high-pitched like a woman’s. “He died and you just sit there!”

  Before I could throw out a ward and expose myself by openly manifesting my magic, Krueger himself transformed into a wolf and attacked, with disorienting and breathtaking speed. Only an alpha dog could transform at will, and only the leader of a great pack could transform without the light of the moon or another, earthly sorcery to assist him.