Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  Unfortunately, and as usual, my mother took my question in the least charitable light possible. “Listen, disrespectful girl. I was the one who did right to stay in the afterworld.”

  “To stay with Papa,” I said with a little sigh I could not conceal. My papa, whom I adored beyond all reason, was a mortal man with no magic. And, alas, he was gone, truly gone.

  Before I could say anything more, a strange, astral wind whipped the gray clouds of the second Heaven into a churning black froth. The wind howled, desolate, and it occurred to me how much the place had suffered for the lack of Raziel’s presence. Instead of a safe haven, the second Heaven was now a vacuum, a celestial battlefield. What harm had I done, tempting Raziel to descend to Earth?

  A creature emerged from the wind: one with huge needle teeth, long grasping claws, and glowing red eyes. This was a demon of the lower realms, and yet it hunted souls on the celestial plane. The world—even the world beyond—indeed was coming undone.

  The demon rose onto her hind legs: her teats, in two long rows like a sow’s, swung freely down the length of her long bony body. “Ooh, a baby,” she crooned, leaning toward me. “A lost little baby soul. Delicioussss…”

  A baleful shriek jerked my attention to the demon’s left. I expected to see more of them, attracted by the scent of my terror and helplessness as a lost spirit of the afterworld.

  But I was shocked to see that it was my mother who was making such an awful ruckus. I could not understand the words she spat with fury in some ancient forgotten language, Sumerian perhaps, or Phoenician.

  If I was shocked by her vehemence, I was positively amazed by my mother’s magic. She worked magic, my mother did, in the place of death itself, in defiance of everything I had ever thought I had known about the Lazarus witches’ creed and our supposed limitations. I gawked, overcome more by her than by the demons that now gathered like starving stray dogs all around us.

  The first one, with the teats, did not give up easily. “Tekklllaaa…,” she crooned, and my astral skin crawled. My mother’s spell had revealed her true name, and one’s name in the possession of your enemies could be a fatal weapon, wielded against you.

  My mother raised her hands into the mist, her high forehead and wild eyes in sharp relief against the stormy gray of the clouds. Her long reddish hair streamed out behind her, as if we fought deep under a churning ocean.

  “Astarte aggarat…,” my mother said, her mouth filled with the words, as hard as stones. She spat them out at our enemies, and they struck hard. The teats-demon fell backward, screaming, and other creatures rose out of the mists and tore her demonic spirit to shreds, gushing astral blood.

  My mother grabbed my arm as I stood there, gaping. “Return!” she ordered me. “Recite the spell of return, quick, before they are done tearing her apart.”

  “What about you, Mama?” I hesitated. “That was … magnificent.” I had never seen my mother work magic during her lifetime, and the spectacle had healed something in me that I had never before realized was broken.

  “Yes, yes, but you need to go. Get out of here! Summon me for your army when it is time. I will not resist your crazy schemes any longer.”

  My mind reeled with my mother’s promise, but I had no time to revel in it. The demonfeast became positively frantic and I knew they would soon be upon us again.

  “I can handle them,” my mother said. “Go—descend!”

  The spell was simple, the way familiar. I recited the spell of return, the only one my mother had ever taught me that I actually learned, however unwillingly. I folded into a needle of light and shot back into my bleeding body, back into this world of ecstasy and pain.

  But even as I fled, I wondered at the mystery of Tekla Lazarus, and why she would only consent to wield her magic, so masterfully, now that she was dead.

  And even as I returned, I wondered how I could yet save Raziel, who still resided in the land of the living.

  18

  Cold. Cold and miserable and damp. They had dumped my body in the freezing cement basement, and I returned to life only to find that a mortal hand was clasped around the locket with Asmodel in it, in the process of ripping it away from my neck.

  “Go into shit,” I hissed in Hungarian, and it worked as well as a spell. The offending hand withdrew, together with the human being caught in the process of looting a dead body, and the corpse-robber’s footfalls echoed away.

  I was flat on my back on a cold, cement floor. The smell was extraordinarily bad; the light dim and reddish. In the last few months, I had become adept at dying and coming back, and I was glad of my expertise, for the circumstances in which I had returned this time were indeed grim.

  Apparently Krueger’s slashing fangs had not severed my vocal cords, for I could still whisper a spell aloud, and that helped what came next to transpire more easily. I wove a spell of healing like a lace scarf, and wrapped it around my throat. Warm caresses of words knitted my flesh back together, healed my throat more with every beat of my resurrected heart.

  With a sigh, I pulled myself upright, made sure Asmodel was still inside the locket and the locket was still securely attached to the chain Gisele had fastened around my neck. I listened hard; the would-be locket-stealer was gone.

  I glanced around the cold, dank cellar and stiffened in shock. Viktor’s lifeless face stared back at me from the floor, his brilliant blue eyes now empty, not a meter’s length away from my own aching, but once more living body.

  I searched for his soul, but he had gone, I prayed to a more hospitable corner of the second Heaven than I had just returned from. Perhaps his guardian angel was waiting for him there, for certainly Viktor Mandelstam had earned his place in the next world, a place of glory and of peace.

  With a trembling hand, I reached out and closed his eyelids. His face was swollen and purpled with bruises, and his left ear looked like a cauliflower head, someone had boxed it so terribly. Poor Viktor. At least his sufferings were over, and I was sure he had borne them like a hero until they were at an end.

  My body stiffened again as if stricken with Viktor’s wounds. What a terrible end, what a devastating death. Without Viktor, the Hashomer would have to find some way to knit itself together, just as my flesh had to heal somehow, despite the punishment it had taken.

  I forced myself to focus on life, and not on Viktor’s body, so close to me, so empty of his essence. I sent my witch’s sight throughout the building, angrily brushing aside the wards and accepting the pain as so many bothersome bee stings, the wards guarding the knowledge I sought: whether Raziel remained alive, or if he too had met Viktor’s fate.

  In the uppermost cell of the building, I found his soul steady and strong, clear and serene as always. Fear weighed heavily upon his shoulders, and he was hungry, thirsty, and weary. But he was alive. And they had not yet broken him.

  With a low curse I hauled myself to my feet. I had no shoes on, but fortunately I still had on my baroness’s blue dress. I squinted against the weak light as I searched for a window.

  Now I had to be careful, despite the fact that I had cheated death yet again. It was too late for me to do anything to help Viktor—he had died alone, with no one to help him or hear his cries as they broke his body. But Raziel still lived. I had to find a way to release him from this terrible prison.

  I was pretty sure I could escape this place myself. But if I left, was I condemning Raziel? I had only a minute to decide, a few moments to weigh my lousy choices.

  If I stayed, what could I do? The wards in the prison were strong. My magic could penetrate them but I would soon be overcome by the pain and weakness inflicted by them. I could try to break him free using only my mortal efforts, but I could not prevail against an armed Gestapo and SS werewolves gathered in their place of strength.

  No. I hated to leave Raziel here, in this awful place, but my best chance of saving him would be from a position of relative safety. With a heavy heart, I resolved to leave him behind and find a way to rescue Raziel
from outside.

  I took one more moment to send to him, despite the claws of dark sorcery slashing at me as I did so. I whispered to him, “Do not fear,” as he had whispered to me so many times. And I fervently hoped that my benediction raised his spirits the way his angelic ministrations had always uplifted mine.

  With a wrench I withdrew my second sight from him, where he huddled in the corner of his cell, alone but for my message. Leaving him there hurt worse than the slashing pain of the wards, but we both had jobs to do.

  “I will never be a princess,” I whispered to myself, remembering my sister’s motto, and I smiled so as not to cry. I returned my attention to the casement window I had located above my head. No bars across it: the dead do not break out of prison … well, so the Nazis thought!

  With an elbow, I poked out the glass of the window, and held my breath at the tinkle of broken glass.

  Outside, it was night, and no one was on the street. I hauled myself up and through the window, and away, unsteady on the cobblestone pavement, but free.

  * * *

  Once I made sure I wasn’t being followed, I went like a shot for the Hashomer headquarters in Kazimierz. I let myself in and, shaking, called Chana’s brother Asher on the telephone, knowing that our time as a fighting force in Kraków was at an end. Viktor had died with honor, but in a very real way, the Hashomer of Kraków had died along with him.

  I had bad news to convey, and I wanted to do it quickly and in person. Asher contacted Levin, the Communist leader, but he told me the Polish nationalists had all gone to the salt mines in Wieliczka.

  He said nothing about Raziel.

  Mina was the first one through the door, and she took one look at me and my blood-soaked dress, and fainted dead away on the threshold. When Chana, Asher, and Levin arrived together a few moments later, they found me hovering over her limp body.

  Chana screamed and Levin grabbed me and threw me into the office. Asher scooped up the unconscious girl and they slammed and locked the door.

  “What did you do to her?” Levin roared.

  “Nothing,” I said, my throat still raw where Krueger had torn it.

  “Poor thing fainted,” Chana said in a quavery voice. She slapped ineffectually at Mina’s hollow, gray cheeks. The girl looked more dead than me.

  “Then what happened?” Levin narrowed his eyes and stared at me.

  At this point, I was beyond caring what Levin thought. “Hans Frank is dead; we can claim his death for our cause. But we were detained. I escaped. But Viktor…”

  The three of them stared at me, thunderstruck, while Mina started crying from where she lay curled up on the floor.

  “The wrong one died,” Levin spat. “I warned him not to interfere with Frank. But you seduced him, you with your magic and your lies.”

  I let him go on, I even let him strike me. Levin’s grief and fury were shadowed with something else, something even darker, and I could not hunt out the secret of it and fight him all at once.

  Unfortunately Asher pulled him off me, and the shadow over Levin’s shoulder receded. Again from the north. I wiped at my face with the back of my hand: my nose was bleeding.

  I stanched the flow with a whispered spell and rose to my full height, infused with my own grief and fury. Even Chana backed away in horror from the sight of me, and Mina, fully conscious now, whimpered from the floor.

  “You know they have Raziel. But you never said how they got him.”

  No one answered me, and a terrible realization rose in my mind. “How?” My voice grew softer, filled with menace.

  “He volunteered, Raziel did,” Mina said from the floor. “The Nazis contacted us directly.”

  I knew what she was thinking: that Viktor or I had broken and given the Hashomer to the Nazis. “Viktor didn’t break,” I said, my voice a bit gentler now. Mina had adored Viktor.

  “We thought they had killed you, too,” she went on.

  “Well, not exactly, yes? And I didn’t break, either. I don’t understand why Raziel volunteered. Why did you not just run?”

  Levin’s face was suddenly blank, a mask. Like an automaton, he spoke without a trace of emotion, as if his soul had been switched off. “We received the call a few days ago. They demanded another partisan or they would come in and kill us all. They promised to return Viktor in exchange for a volunteer and some information.”

  “And you just let Raziel go?” I could not believe it. “You thought for even a moment that Raziel volunteering himself would give you anything at all? You believed them?”

  The rage boiled in me, my palms now itched to throw a spell at Levin’s big fat head. Only the thought that Raziel would not want me to do it stayed my hand.

  “Raziel wanted to go,” Chana said. Now she was crying too. “He said it would buy us some time.”

  Oh, Raziel. So brave, so willing to believe the best of people. For his sake, I scanned Levin again instead of denouncing him as a traitor.

  No, he was not a collaborator, nor a Nazi spy. He desperately wanted the Germans out of Poland.

  But the Russians …

  “What do you know about the Soviets, Levin?” I said, my voice a half whisper. “What are they doing with their psychotronics, their science of magic?”

  He startled, his lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “Come, Levin, I put no spell on you,” I said, my voice louder now. “Spit it out. The Soviets, the north. What do you know?”

  Tears began to spill down Levin’s rounded, red face. “The Russians, they have a technology, from the Institute for Brain Research…” But he stopped himself.

  “The Russians are our enemy, too,” I whispered.

  Waves of grief poured from Levin; I could sense the Soviet-Nazi pact was more than he could bear. “You must choose, Levin. Your ideology or your people.”

  Chana’s voice was soft but implacable. “We can trust Levin. Like we trust you. I’ve known Levin all my life. He is Jewish too, you know.”

  She paused. “We have known him longer than you, Magda. And yesterday the Nazis called again. What can we do? We can’t leave the children behind.”

  Chana’s soft words were like water wearing away stone. I could not deny the partisans’ impossible position. It was only a matter of time until we were scattered or killed.

  I trembled with the effort of restraining my magic. “Surrender me, then. I will do as Raziel did. Buy time, so you can get away.”

  I waved away their protestations. They could help me no more, and Levin was a broken man. If I was going to save Raziel, I was going to have to do it myself, somehow. Even if it meant destroying the Gestapo headquarters from within.

  * * *

  I went alone, in broad daylight, to surrender myself to the German authorities. As in a nightmare, the gray, squat building loomed huge, and I walked through the front door, back into Krueger’s place of power.

  It was awful. But the look on Krueger’s face when he saw me once again gave me no small consolation.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said. We sat in his airless office, and Chana had absurdly insisted on a fresh dress before they sent me over, so I looked, if anything, better than a few days before. My throat by now had healed.

  Krueger’s eyes bulged from their sockets, exactly as Hans Frank’s had the afternoon I killed him. He scrubbed at his mouth with his knuckles. “It is not possible.”

  “And yet I am here. Do I terrify, my dear Herr Krueger?” I could not help but laugh.

  I expected horrible torments to result from my cheekiness, but Krueger looked distracted, sickly, defeated, as if he had been injected with some obscure but cunning poison. He seemed to have lost his appetite for torture.

  Krueger only sent me back into my dungeon with hardly a word, and I spent a long night whispering into the pipe. No answer. I sent to Raziel, but I could no longer find him.

  That long night of isolation brought me closer to the breaking point than anything else that Krueger had done. My traitor mind insiste
d that Raziel had been tortured to death. And all they would have to do was show me his broken body and I would unleash Asmodel and break my promise to Gisele. I would take all of them with me to the next world, and Asmodel himself I would compel to torment Raziel’s killers for all eternity.

  It would make me a greater monster than Krueger. But I didn’t care.

  After I endured an eternity of self-inflicted torment, daylight broke. There was no window in my cell, but I could sense the sun, much in the way that vampires do.

  It was only then that I remembered to pray. I asked for forgiveness, I asked for strength, and I asked for courage. And finally, I asked the angel Albion directly to intercede for Raziel, no matter where he now was.

  I expected some kind of answer to my prayers. But I was completely unprepared for the reply I received by the end of this crucible of a day.

  A different man retrieved me from the cell that afternoon. He was a member of the Gestapo, but very young, and visibly afraid of me. He opened the huge metal door and swung it open on its creaky hinges, and said not a word.

  He motioned for me to follow and I did, marveling that he did not tie my hands, or brandish a gun in my face. As we ascended through the snaking hallways to the chief’s office, I considered making a break for it, but I could feel the foul wards still reaching through the walls and wires of the place. If I ran without spellcasting I would be shot dead before taking a dozen steps.

  My Gestapo escort pointed me to Krueger’s by now familiar office door. He rapped hard twice, and Krueger called out something muffled and unintelligible in reply. The young man reached for the doorknob and pushed the door open.

  Krueger sat as usual behind his squat, ugly desk. The burned-up Nazi flag was gone. And the man sitting in the leather chair opposite Krueger’s desk was none other than my employer, the notorious vampire Gabor Bathory. The last I had heard of him, the other Budapest vampires had abandoned him for dead, a traitor to the Nazi cause.