Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  The other werewolf, Krueger’s deputy, got to me first. He knocked my chair backward, smashing it apart under his enormous weight.

  I screamed again, the sound half choked by the force of his horrible jaws clamped around my throat. “Stop it, dog,” I ordered, and I had the presence of mind to say it in German. And I grabbed his jaw with my hands, augmented my physical strength with just a touch of magic. If things had not happened so suddenly, the wolf would likely have sensed that magical muscle. But Krueger flickered back into human form, grabbed the wolf by the scruff of the neck, and smashed him on the top of his head with the butt of his pistol.

  “You stupid ass—get off of her!” he ordered, and dragged the wolf backward. Whining, the cur obeyed, and I sat up, marveling at the Nazi’s strength in his human form, and his ability to change without hesitation or apparent pain.

  “You are lucky you didn’t rip out her throat. This bitch may be a magical, some sort of spy,” Krueger said. “I have silver bullets in my gun. Obey your orders!”

  The werewolf slunk to Krueger’s feet, his haunches bent low, tail tucked between his legs. I looked up at Krueger, and his pistol was now trained on my face. “You are coming with me, fräulein.”

  I had no false identification, nothing. I was worse than dead.

  16

  A shiny black vehicle pulled up to the curb outside the Literary Café. I considered attacking them all at once on the street, knowing my chances of survival were lower by far in the Gestapo jails and the already infamous torture rooms, but I was hoping Viktor got away, and I believed it was wise, even still, to cloak my identity as long as possible.

  Without ceremony they shoved me into the Black Maria. The doors slammed shut, and the engine rumbled to life. It pulled away from the curb and lurched over the cobblestones, presumably on the way to Gestapo headquarters.

  Krueger was waiting.

  I had known I probably would not escape the trap we had set to catch Hans Frank. But despite my resolve, a dreadful panic seized me as the black van took me away. I thought I saw Viktor on the road in the borrowed Mercedes; perhaps my scuffle with the wolves had given him enough time to escape.

  That half-imagined glimpse of Viktor, free, gave me a glimmer of hope. But otherwise I was gripped by a terrible fear, fear of what the Gestapo would do to me, what they could make me do. I remembered Asmodel’s prophecy from inside the paprika tin, my death at Ravensbruck. Was this capture what he had foreseen?

  My mind strayed to the man I had just killed, the strutting lawyer with the five children and shrewish wife. I had no remorse about killing him. None. I had asked Gisele to look into his future, and she had called him the Butcher of Poland. The man had already earned the title. Had he but the opportunity, he would have murdered millions. This was no case of condemning a man for what he was, without the benefit of a trial. He deserved to die.

  I had decided to kill Krueger too if I could. But the man was vicious, and smart enough not to let his guard down around me even though I kept up my pretense of clueless innocence.

  My fear was not so much that they would kill me: I had died before and knew how to get back. I was terrified of somehow betraying the Hashomer and Raziel, and even more afraid they would discover the ancient demon bespelled inside Gisele’s old, dented locket. They could not get him out without me to spell him out, but I was afraid of what they could do to force me.

  The Black Maria slammed to a stop, and the rear doors swung open. Rough hands grabbed me and yanked me out, the wolves now growling, making a big show of their fangs and desire to attack.

  Krueger waited at the top of a short flight of wooden stairs. He grabbed me by the forearm and I gave a little cry of pain. “This way, fräulein,” he said, his eyes glowing with an unholy glee. My suspicions had been correct: the man enjoyed inflicting pain, was excited by the things he planned to do to me.

  Unknowingly Krueger gave me a gift; my heart went cold with fury at this sadistic bastard and his unbridled power over innocent people.

  I was no innocent, not any longer. I would not hesitate to kill Krueger if I could. He kept his gun out and pointed to my temple, so trying any quick magic was not an option: I would be dead before I could whisper the most rudimentary spell of protection.

  “I do not know your game.” He loomed over me, his breath sour as he spit the words into my face. “But I will have it out of you. Baroness, my ass.”

  “No, there is no game, sir. Of course I am a baroness,” I protested weakly. I had decided that keeping up the pretense would buy me a little more time while they ferreted out the truth. “You may call my uncle’s house in Budapest and see for yourself! His assistant, Eva Farkas, is his chatelaine until he returns from business in Berlin.”

  As a werewolf, Krueger was not privy to internal vampire quarrels: not even Hitler would be admitted to the Vampirrat in Berlin. Unlike the werewolves, the vampires might swear an alliance with a mortal, but never cede their sovereignty. I had some hope that Eva, quick-witted as she was, could devise some ruse to keep me alive.

  In the meantime they locked me overnight in a cement room with no windows and a drain built into the floor. I stared at that drain for quite a while, thinking of the showers at the women’s bathhouse on Margaret Island, which I used to visit in Budapest with my mother. Now, the drain reminded me of an abattoir.

  There were no chairs, and only a single lightbulb swinging from its socket and a wire that disappeared into the ceiling. The room smelled of mold and something else, something fetid and awful that I was determined not to identify.

  As the hours dragged on, I fingered the dented locket hanging around my neck. Asmodel was my last resort, my emergency weapon held in reserve, my glass ampoule of cyanide, too. Despite the solemn oath I had sworn to Gisele, I chewed my nails off one by one and itched to set the demon free.

  But no magic could serve me here. I could call upon Leopold and send him to warn Raziel, but they undoubtedly already knew my fate, and the last thing I wanted was for Raziel to die trying to rescue me.

  So I unclasped the thin gold chain around my neck, nestled the locket in the palm of my hand. I took a shaky breath to center myself, my lips began to form the syllables of the ancient demon’s name …

  … and with a great clatter, the locks were thrown open and Krueger himself came through the door of my prison.

  I quickly replaced the locket, and forced myself to look into his eyes without flinching, without hope or despair. Krueger had his suspicions about me, but I would go to my death playing the part of a ditzy Christian noblewoman with nothing dangerous to hide. If Krueger killed me before he found out my true identity and mission, my friends could perhaps escape my fate. And I had my own ways of cheating death.

  He nodded curtly at me and without a word he whipped out his pistol and pointed it between my eyes. “Baroness,” he said with a snarl, “you will come with me. I will escort you myself.”

  I edged along the wall to the now-ajar door of the cell, and I backed away, stumbling in the sudden daylight of the hallway outside. I tried to sneak my sight into his mind, but he slapped me hard across the face and I smashed into the far wall, seeing nothing but stars.

  “Don’t try your dirty magic on me, you little bitch. I am wise to you. Once I figure you out, I will dispose of you. But not before. I swear to you, fräulein. I will not let you go until I have squeezed every last drop of information out.”

  He pointed the way down the hall and I stumbled ahead, half expecting him to empty a clip of bullets into the back of my head. I blinked hard to clear my mind, the life force surging through my limbs like blue electric fire. We reached the end of the hallway and Krueger unbolted the huge iron-reinforced wooden door.

  We entered a busy room that was part of the ordinary world, with young men and women in crisp uniforms bustling about, carrying papers and laughing to each other. Just another day at the office, simply buried in paperwork. Good thing it was a Friday.

  The morning sun
light hurt my eyes and I blinked hard to keep from being dazzled. I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and kept going, as if I were climbing a mountain instead of crossing a carpeted office.

  Krueger waved his pistol at the threshold of his office. “Pass over, fräulein,” he said, voice low.

  As I stepped across the cheap carpeting, a sharp pain shot through me, a blue-hot terrible electric shock. I could not keep from him a low, barely restrained little cry.

  Krueger snorted through his nose. “You won’t be trying your magical shit in here, fräulein. The place is warded against filth like you. Sit down.”

  He shoved me into a heavy, splintery chair and, shaky, I gratefully sank into it. The fact I sat in his front office and not in a basement dungeon filled with torture equipment gave me a faint but steady hope, like starlight. It was not much comfort, but at that point, it was all I had, except the dubious protection of the demon Asmodel.

  “You will tell me why you killed Hans Frank,” Krueger said from the doorway, without any preamble.

  I swallowed hard. I had to make it out of this room alive, and I had to do it with my secrets intact. Too many people would die if my nerve broke, if Krueger indeed squeezed my precious secrets out of me.

  “My dear sir,” I managed to say in choppy, formal German. “The death of Governor Frank has shattered my future, I assure you. I have nothing more to say. His poor wife, his poor children.” And I dabbed at the corners of my eyes with my bare fingers, having no hanky available to make my show of dainty grief more credible.

  “You lie, you bitch,” he snarled again. He stepped all the way into the room, slammed the door with a great show of fury, and shook me by the shoulders until my teeth rattled in my head.

  “You are a spy!” he roared. “And somebody sent you to do this horrible deed. Who? I want the names, all of them. Who was it? The Communists? The Jew Communists? The Polish Army? Who?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about!” I roared right back. “I am a baroness, you dirty dog!”

  The sudden silence curdled, grew ugly. Krueger got very still, then he walked easily around the big, ugly desk and squat chair at the far end of the room, near the only window. A Nazi flag waved on a tiny flagpole on the desk near the big leather blotter.

  I wouldn’t meet his gaze. I only stared at the tiny bloodred flag as he hissed low, as he crouched over the blotter like a wolf about to spring.

  “We’re not here to talk about me, fräulein. Oh no. I assure you that you and your associates made a dreadful error murdering poor Hans. The fool was earnest and he was bloody-minded, but he was a loyal dog, one who waited on his master’s bidding.

  “But I am no dog. I am a wolf, fräulein. I am a vicious, uncivilized cur, the leader of one of the greatest packs in all the protectorate of Poland. And I will enjoy hunting the scum out of Poland. Especially foreign scum like you. I have no compunction, none, about killing those who offend my kind. I lust for the kill. I will kill Jews, faggots, cripples, priests, Gypsies at a rate ten times that of that fat little fucker Hans Frank.”

  He leaned back in his chair and studied me as I avoided looking at him. “Killing Frank was your first mistake, fräulein. Your next one will be holding out on me for another moment, because you will suffer dreadful torments here, only to give me the information anyway in the end.”

  I shut my lips tight and willed myself to be still. I stared at the Nazi flag so hard and with such fury that the swastika in the middle began to smoke and blacken.

  “Stop it!” Krueger snarled from across the desk. “I will shove the flag down your throat if you dare to desecrate it.”

  I raised my eyes to meet his. “There is nothing I can do to desecrate something already so filthy and evil.”

  Well, that had blown my cover, for sure. But it was worth it, to see Krueger so thoroughly lose his control. I could smell the scent of his fear under his towering rage. At the heart of every werewolf is a dog, no matter how nasty his fangs and his howl. He knows he must answer to someone above, and if he is an alpha he knows that if his hold upon his underlings slackens, he is walking dead.

  He flashed into wolf form—I realized now that he transformed unwillingly when his passion overtook him, like a nervous tic he could not control. And that heedless rage was dangerous, and could lead him to destruction. Believe me, I know.

  I thought of my death, my refuge in the next world, and I held my ground in the face of his insane snarls and growls, the snapping of his jaws mere centimeters from my face. Once, not long before, the prospect of my own suffering and death might have frightened me into attempting an escape or some kind of clever subterfuge.

  But I knew my limits better, and my strengths. I could not fool such a creature, adept as he was in dominating those of lesser caste in the werewolf hierarchy. Krueger was used to having the upper hand, and wielding that advantage to inflict the maximum punishment.

  Someone like me—someone who did not exist in his power structure at all—could fit into only one of two categories, threat or prey. And I had just demonstrated I would no longer pretend to be Krueger’s prey.

  The foul wards in the room hampered my ability to inflict spellcraft on him, to destroy him with magic. But I could torment him with my strengths, however caged they were, and I could tempt him to destroy himself with the effort he expended to torture and eliminate me from the world.

  He returned to his human form with a visible effort and an anguished snarl. “Fräulein,” he said, all out of breath, as if I were the one interrogating him, “you will pay for your impertinence. By the time I am through with you, you will curse the day you were born.”

  He grabbed me by the hair and yanked me to my feet. I remained quiet, studying my enemy as he shook me like a rag doll. He wanted to kill me without any further fuss, I could smell it. He lusted for the kill, just as he had said. But his Nazi superiors, looming in the back of his conscious mind, restrained the wolf in him from ruling him.

  I would have preferred to have died by the wolf, not the man. It would have been a cleaner death. But Krueger had lied earlier, to himself and to me. He was not ruled by his wolf. Krueger was now ruled by his Nazi masters. And though he did not admit it even to himself, his submission to the Nazi regime robbed him of his powers as a free pack leader.

  I knew I would die at his human hands, in the service of a mortal human leader. And I knew that even that counted as a grim kind of victory.

  * * *

  He tossed me back into the same cell, smacking me hard across the face as if to mark me. “Choke on your blood, bitch,” he snarled, his voice so thick with the wolf as to be all but unrecognizable. “Think on who you would die to protect, and know I will have them in my power by the end of this day.”

  He slammed the door with these charming parting words, and I sank to the cold cement floor, in exhaustion as well as relief. I had managed to survive my first social engagement with my captor, but I had the sinking feeling that he would take a cruel revenge on me for this dubious triumph.

  Within minutes my fears were justified. I heard a low, soft banging on the exposed pipes stretching over my head across the ceiling. After a moment, I recognized the rhythm of the beautiful “Blue Danube” waltz:

  Dah dah dah de dah—DUM DUM, dum dum …

  And my heart sank. That little tune pierced my heart more painfully than anything Krueger had done, for that was the tune that Viktor liked to tease me with, his way of bringing me into the fold with the Polish partisans. Every time he hummed “The Blue Danube,” he made light of my Hungarian roots, made them something pretty and funny, of little consequence and nothing to worry about.

  In this filthy Nazi hellhole, the cheerful little tune all but broke my heart. I looked up and saw in the dim, flickering light of the single bulb that the exposed pipe snaked along the wall near where I lay on the floor in a ball. I crawled to the place where the pipe disappeared into the wall, and I used my bare knuckles to rap back the tune. I had he
ard Viktor, I knew it was him.

  I tentatively tried to send a message to him telepathically, but a horrific headache put a stop to that. I imagined it was not just the interrogation rooms of this facility but also the prison cells that had been warded against the use of spellcraft. For now, I had only the resources that Viktor did: my humanity, my refusal to give Krueger the satisfaction of taking my pride from me, and my wits.

  I leaned my head against the pipe, and to my surprise, heard Viktor’s voice in my ear, as clear as if we spoke by telephone. “Are you there? Speak with your lips against the pipe—it will carry the vibrations to me.”

  “A shame, my friend. You are here.”

  “You didn’t think I could get away from the Literary, did you? Not when they figured out Frank was dead.”

  I felt an absurd little surge of pride, lying on the filthy floor of the Gestapo headquarters in Kraków. “Yes, Frank is dead.”

  “Let us not speak of this.” I understood what Viktor meant. It would be simplicity itself to listen in upon our open conversation over the exposed pipe. Anyone along the entire row of cells could put their ear to the cold, rusty metal and hear anything we said.

  “This is very important,” Viktor said, and the steely command in his voice brought me back to my senses. Instead of the horrible miasma of dread in which I had been lost, I became alert and fully self-possessed once more.

  “You must not show fear. No matter what they do to you, no matter what they say, no matter who they show to you, do not give them the satisfaction of your fear. They feed on fear like vampires, they drink it like a delicacy. And the more fear you feed them, the more they will want.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  “You still have something they want even more. Information. They will not kill you as long as you have it, not on purpose.”

  I did not agree. I had heard of the horrible deaths visited upon partisans in Germany and other places in the Reich. If I could not escape somehow from this place, I expected to meet my end in the main square of Kraków, strung up and tortured publicly to generate the mass fear that Krueger craved.