Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  But still, Viktor’s words made my courage surge within me. He, like me, had been captured and imprisoned. Unlike me, he had no magical resources upon which to draw. And yet he remained magnificent in the face of torture and death. It was as if the fulfillment of his most terrible nightmares absolved him of the need to suffer under the yoke of his fears any longer. Gone was the hesitant, deskbound Hashomer leader I had met that first day above the pharmacist’s shop in Kraków. Now Viktor was a lion. I knew I might break, but I was certain that Viktor would not. He had resolved to die with honor.

  “You must not allow your guilt to get the better of you,” Viktor went on. “The Gestapo will play upon your loves, your weaknesses, to break you. Don’t let them.”

  I thought of Raziel and Gisele and caught my breath. It was bad enough knowing that Viktor had been captured in the dragnet they had thrown over the city to catch those who knew me. If they ensnared either of those whom I loved the most in the world, I recognized that the leverage would shift from me to Krueger.

  I was weak, I allowed the images of Raziel and Gisele to fill my mind. And though the thought of them comforted me and gave me resolve, they also burned through the anger that had masked my terror. I curled up tighter, as if I could protect my heart as well as my guts from Krueger’s blows and kicks.

  Asmodel burned the skin over my heart. He fed on my fear too, grew stronger as my energy was focused on Krueger and not him. Yankel had done a masterful job trapping him in his locket-prison, more securely than Krueger had imprisoned me, but I wasn’t sure that Asmodel would stay put in the event of my death.

  I could hide the locket in the cell and hope I returned each time from my sessions with Krueger. Or I could die the partisan’s death I was sure Krueger planned for me, and leave the locket to disappear into obscurity, the way The Book of Raziel had vanished countless centuries ago.

  Sometimes magical objects are most effectively hidden in plain sight. And so I decided to keep the locket with me, for as long as they would let me. In order to make it more likely I could keep the locket, I stuffed it inside my brassiere, where it was no longer visible. If they took my clothes, I would have to find a better hiding place. But that was not yet, and part of me was convinced I would be dead before they worked around to such niceties as changing me over into prisoner’s garb. Krueger’s questioning held an awful urgency.

  “Krueger doesn’t want to find out if Frank was killed,” Viktor said. I held my breath and worried that someone else, some Nazi bastard, listened to us, but Viktor, heedless, went on. “Krueger benefits more from Frank’s death, natural or not, than anybody else. And if Frank was in fact murdered, it will cause complications for the new governor. Krueger, of course.”

  That meant the information Krueger wanted had nothing to do with Frank. That was where he had started, but he was only using it as a lever to pry out of me what he really wanted.

  But what could he want besides the facts of Frank’s death? Asmodel abruptly burned hotter against the side of my breast, and I suddenly understood. It was my witchery itself that enraged and frightened him, not the circumstances of his predecessor’s squalid end.

  Krueger must not get my magic out of me. And above all he must not discover the fact of Asmodel’s existence, let alone the fact that I held him on my person.

  It was terribly dangerous, but it was the only decent option I had left. With a sigh, I accepted it: I was going to have to die. And despite the fact I had done it more than once before, that did not make it an easier prospect to contemplate. Dying is hard every single time you do it.

  “My friend,” I said, unwilling to say Viktor’s name aloud in this dangerous place, “I want to say good-bye and thank you. I will not survive my next session with Krueger. You give me the courage to meet my end knowing that you fight on, and I will speak well of you in the world to come.”

  “You mustn’t talk like that,” he said. I realized that Viktor didn’t understand I could truly, and not just metaphorically, return from the dead—we had never discussed the full scope of my abilities. And I could not tell him now.

  “It is simply the truth, my dear,” I replied, my voice steady even as the tears flowed from my eyes and over the exposed pipe. “I will be dead by this time tomorrow. I want you to know that I will not break. I will give Krueger nothing, and this is why I must die.”

  “Then courage, my girl,” he said, his voice now a little hard to hear through the pipe. “We will stand together here, and that is a victory over the Nazis all by itself.”

  Brave, noble words, but I would have preferred to see as our victory Krueger dead and the Nazis forced out of Poland. But wishing did not work magic.

  I waited for Krueger to come back, but now I did not wait alone. That rusty pipe had become a conduit for my courage, from Viktor to me and back again. And if the Gestapo had meant for us to talk, they were stupid to allow it, for it had a great effect upon what was to follow.

  17

  “We have Raziel,” Krueger began, a big smile on his vulpine face.

  I refused to give him the satisfaction of allowing the sudden painful shock of his words to register on my face. Instead, I shrugged and focused on getting the grit out from under my left thumbnail. “Do you? Why should I care?”

  He laughed then, a low, blood-curdling sound. I had resolved to die early and with as little interaction as possible, but it now occurred to me that, just as I had information useful to Krueger, the Gestapo chief had information useful to me as well.

  “Raziel is your boyfriend, is he not? A fellow Hungarian, a partisan … a Jew?”

  “What nonsense,” I said, willing with all my might to affect a bored, careless tone. “I don’t know any Jews.”

  “Still pretending to be a baroness, fräulein.” And Krueger laughed again, sounding genuinely amused this time.

  “If you are trying to endear yourself to me, Krueger, you are failing,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, stretched my aching back, and sighed as I studied the grubby, water-stained ceiling.

  Krueger lit a cigarette, and I watched a thin wisp of smoke reach upward like a ghostly hand. “You have no identification,” he said, affable now. “You have nothing but the truth to save you.”

  “You lie, Krueger. Nothing will save me, and we both know it. You might as well string me up in the public square and have done with it. But I am sure the Hungarian government will not appreciate the appalling treatment I have received.”

  “Clearly your night on the cement floor has made you cranky, fräulein.”

  “If you intended to frighten me, Krueger, you have failed. And such actions as yours have unforeseen repercussions.”

  My words hung in the air like the cigarette smoke, and Krueger said nothing to dispel them.

  “I will give you one last chance, fräulein, because there is something of the truth wrapped inside your web of lies. There is something noble in you, something not Jewish, something I would have admired in a human being, not a verminous piece of filth such as yourself. Tell me the truth, and I will kill you humanely.”

  “If there is something you admire in me, Krueger, it is the part that would refuse the humane death of a farm animal. If you will kill me, rip out my throat like another wolf. But stop your babbling. Your cowardice wearies me.”

  I had intended to provoke him beyond the restraint of his reason, but he maintained control, though with some difficulty. I quite deliberately shifted my focus from the dirty ceiling to his desk, the scorched Nazi flag, and then to his face.

  A slow tic worked under his left eye, and his lips were clenched around the smoldering cigarette. “Your eyes are bloodshot,” I remarked. “I imagine you slept worse than me. And why would that be?”

  When our eyes met, I refused to lower my gaze. I was now ready to die as a tactic in our war. I wanted him to kill me. Only then would I have the final upper hand over him, haunt his nightmares until I could kill him in turn.

  I wanted him to suffer.


  His Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed, and his nostrils flared briefly with the effort not to look away. I knew with complete conviction that I unnerved him.

  Before he killed me, I intended to break him, make him useless to his Nazi masters. My shadow would darken his every moment after my death, he would doubt his every act. In truth he would become a golem of my malign intentions.

  “You never answered my question,” I said. I did not have to pretend my self-possession: the prospect of my death gave me a somber power.

  He growled, though he did manage to maintain his human form this time. “I am not the one being interrogated here,” he said, his voice so thick with anger the German clotted deep in his throat.

  “I told you yesterday, you will get nothing worthwhile out of me.”

  “But the fact remains, fräulein, we still have Raziel. You can lie to me about your connection to this man, but we have him.”

  He stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in a marble ashtray at his left elbow, and for the first time since I had entered his domain he smiled. “I shan’t bother using more persuasive methods on you, fräulein. For whatever reason, you prove too blockheaded for the usual methods we use here. But your friend, the one you claim not to know—I believe he will prove more pliant.”

  For the first time since Krueger had ushered me back into his office that morning, he had gained the upper hand over me. But I refused to admit it. “This Raziel is nothing to me. You say he is a Jew? Poor man. I have important people back in Hungary who will seek to avenge me. What does a poor wretch like this Raziel have? Truly, death is a welcome escape to one such as this.”

  His smile widened, and his teeth abruptly looked longer and more yellow. The wolf wanted to come out, and the man only held him at bay with a supreme effort now. “You speak of him like a beast of prey. As if you were a werewolf yourself. Fräulein, you are a curious specimen, aren’t you.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “I’m beginning to think you want to die.”

  I said nothing.

  “You want me to kill you, you taunt my wolf and expect me to do your will simply because I am a hunter born.” He shook his head and the smile on his lips grew unpleasant. “Fräulein, I did not rise to the top of my pack, to the top of the Nazi hierarchy in the protectorate of Poland, by allowing a creature of lesser power to dictate my actions.”

  Words alone would not get me what I needed. I rose from my chair and took a half step toward the desk. “You assume my power is less. Even here, you may be wrong.”

  I stopped before my body actually touched his desk, and this wolf in human guise and I appraised each other. His smile floated away, and I finally had the measure of Herr Krueger, saw him complete.

  “Fear rules you, Krueger. You can kill me, but that won’t keep you from staring awake all night, waiting for the one who will rise up to take your place, just as you took Frank’s place.”

  I thought of Viktor, knew his position was similar. All of us—wolf, witch, mortal man—were willing to die to achieve our greater ends. That made us all equals of a sort.

  I had to force Krueger’s hand, or we would stand at an impasse until he was done torturing me or Raziel. Neither one of us would break.

  I raised my hands, and began the long invocation of the Bane of Concubines, not a curse concocted by the daughters of Lazarus, but a deadly spell nevertheless, one I knew I could wield.

  The pain began as soon as I lifted my palms up with intention. The wards in the building against malign magics like mine dug into my flesh like barbed wire, and my eyes watered with the pain.

  The foul magic of the Nazis contended with mine. For the first time, I sensed a direction to the wrongness, a flow like a toxic river. It seemed to come from the north.

  But I only held tighter to my spell, and as with the Nazi flag before, the intensity of my fury overwhelmed the wards. Krueger’s long, skinny face paled, and he leapt from his seat, as if it suddenly had gotten too hot for him.

  He grabbed at his throat as my spell snaked around him and squeezed. I could barely speak the words of the spell aloud, but I didn’t need volume to make the intention manifest.

  He knew I was forcing him. He knew I wanted to avoid the spectacle of him torturing Raziel to get the truth out of me, but none of that mattered now. If he didn’t take direct, physical action against me, my spell was going to take hold, and I would take Krueger with me, right out of his office and into the next world.

  With a choked snarl, he shifted into wolf form and lunged for my throat. My magic had succeeded in goading him, where my contempt and resolution hadn’t.

  His jaws locked over my throat and I fell backward, toppling over the chair behind me. He bit deep, bit clean. I had gotten my wish: he killed me as if I were another wolf. A backhanded compliment, but most sincere.

  So I disappeared into death, my own dark domain. And as I fled, I resolved to use whatever sorcery I had to free Raziel before it was too late. I was willing to commit any evil to save him.

  * * *

  As deaths went, my death at the wolf Krueger’s fangs was not the worst. The sensations of ripping, bleeding, the lungs filling with blood, were truly awful, but the gift of Krueger’s death was that it was so fast. And a fast death was exhilarating.

  I shot up to the second Heaven, place of newly dead souls, with my pride and determination intact. But my triumph faded when I recalled that, for the first time, Raziel could not welcome me to his former domain, now shorn of Raziel’s presence, bereft of his spirit, benighted.

  Instead, my mother, Tekla, materialized out of the swirling mists, as though she had expected me. “You’re late,” she said, an edge of irritation creeping into her voice. “Always woolgathering.”

  I stifled a sigh. My mother, a formidable witch indeed, never forgave me for refusing to learn her craft and our family’s unique tradition. And the fact that I had already admitted she was right didn’t mean she would forgive me even here, beyond the grave.

  Sadness made my mother shrewish, and I knew she did not mean to wound me with her scolding. My mother was like a mother bear cuffing her cub.

  My mother and I usually ended up disappointing each other, but that didn’t make me love her any less. “A blessing to see you, Mama,” I said, keeping my love for her to myself. “But I must get back, and quickly. Raziel is in mortal danger now, and he has no magic to protect him.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Like your father.”

  The pain twisted like an astral knife plunged into my heart. “Yes. Like Papa.”

  A steady buzzing distracted me from my mother’s sourpuss. Leo, freed from the confines of my mind, sailed happily around my astral body, glowing like a firefly. “My good deed is again done, Mama,” he sang. “I am here, to serve you.”

  “This is an imp, Leopold,” I said lamely, by way of introduction.

  “Tekla, Tekla!” Leo sang, bouncing like a balloon at the end of a string.

  “We’ve already had the pleasure,” my mother said with a sigh.

  “Thank you again, Leo,” I said. “May I still call upon you? You surely owe me nothing.”

  He floated cross-legged in the air above our heads, his face mock serious. “I am at your service as always, Mama mine. I am growing twenty lifetimes at a time because of you. It’s either help you, or get born as an earthworm twenty times. This is better.”

  “In that case, fly quickly to Raziel in the prison where I died. Squeeze through the wards if you can, and tell him I am coming.”

  With a nod and a wave, my baby imp disappeared to do my bidding.

  “You won’t stay dead, will you,” my mother said. “Sweetheart, do you want the express train to Gehenna?”

  “I don’t care,” I protested. “And why not? I will return, and figure out how to call a demon army too.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” my mother muttered.

  “Why not, Mamika? You’re the one who used to tell me the tales. The Witch of Ein
Dor was the mother of Abner, the general of David’s army. She summoned demons to the court of Solomon. She was a Lazarus. So why can’t we compel demons to make war against evil?”

  “Why not? Didn’t you understand the point of all those stories? Oh, Magdalena, what did I do to deserve a daughter like you?” She sighed and buried her ghostly face in her translucent hands.

  Her words stung, but I would rather have died another thousand times than admit it. “You must have done something really horrible,” I said instead, and I laughed.

  “I’ve been watching you from the next world, Magdalena. You’ve been conjuring demons, and consorting with vampires, and generally overestimating your abilities.”

  She expected me to protest, and I did not disappoint her. “Mama, it’s no time for hiding my light to ensure that I go to Heaven. Hitler is worse than Satan himself, and he is intent on taking over the entire world. How could you expect me to stand by and let him?”

  This last finally coaxed a laugh out of my earnest, careworn old mother. “By the warts on the nose on the Witch of Ein Dor! You are a vexing child, aren’t you. Has it ever occurred to you that events such as Hitler’s invasion of Poland may somehow be beyond your control?”

  Her words hit me like a blow, but I refused to go down. “Everybody says something like that, and all in their nose, sounding like a distinguished professor. And, Mamika, that is how horrible people like Hitler get away with it!”

  I don’t know why, but this last argument stopped her cold. She hovered, silent, next to me, and I realized with awe that I had just had the last word on the subject.

  But I was wrong to believe that I had won the argument. “I can’t stand it anymore. Fine. I am coming with you,” my mother said, her voice prim, her expression stormy. Was it guilt?

  If anything, persuading Tekla caused me deeper unease than simply fighting her. “How can you come back?” I asked her. “Your body has returned to the earth.” I didn’t mean to be a smart aleck about it; I honestly didn’t understand.