Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  His unspoken rebuke—that I too was crazy and suicidal—hung in the air between us, a silent specter I chose to ignore. “I have done all I can in Kraków. I am going to press forward to Warsaw now, and fight with the Polish Home Army.”

  “You are assuming they want you and your talents and your comrades, my dear. All indications are that they do not.”

  It was true: early reports indicated the Home Army had violently rejected overtures by the socialist Zionists, by the local earth spirits, and by the magicals among the Gypsies. They wanted to fight an honorable war, soldier against soldier. Bathory was right: the officers, many of them, were crazy, glory-seeking fools.

  “I understand their fear of us,” I said. “For all our grand proclamations of solidarity, we could be Communists or even Nazi spies, for all they know.”

  Bathory drained the last of his coffee. “This café wearies me. It looks dark enough outside—time for me to say farewell, my little star. I implore you to return to Budapest, where you are wanted. I fly for Budapest this very night.”

  “Beware the Budapest Vampirrat,” I warned him.

  “The Vampirrat should beware of me. And of my loyal lieutenant, the renowned witch Magdalena Lazarus.”

  We were a formidable duo; Bathory was right. But I still had my own fate to follow. “I cannot foretell when or if I will return to resume my service, sir. Gisele would be the one for making that prediction. But I kiss your hands for all that you have done, for saving Raziel, most of all.”

  He stared at me long and low, and I was shocked to see the old vampire overcome with emotion. In his own way, Bathory was no less an idealistic fool than the Poles. Despite the rise of the horrible Arrow Cross, despite the more genteel Fascism of our own dear leader, Miklós Horthy, Bathory still believed with every fiber of his being in the singular greatness of the Magyar people, of the nation-state of Hungary. And he was willing to ignore a great deal of ugliness in order to keep believing.

  All of us believed in something or other. It was better for my purposes that Bathory maintain his illusions. “I miss Budapest desperately,” I said, and at least in this I told only the truth. But the Budapest I loved was already gone forever. “I must make my stand here, regardless. Please believe me, Count. Our battle is still the same.”

  He sighed and bent to kiss my hand in farewell. “You would be the queen of my kingdom if only you would accept your place. I fly for Budapest, little chicken. May your Grandmama Witch watch over you and keep you.”

  He rose, bowed formally to me, as a young courtier would have bowed to Empress Maria Teresa, and he bent to kiss my fingers once more. And then my dear Count Bathory disappeared into the night to face his enemies in Budapest.

  * * *

  Janos dropped Raziel and me at the edge of town and sped away with not a word of farewell. Without Viktor’s lorry, it was a short walk to the Wieliczka salt mine about ten kilometers east of Kraków, in the village of Wieliczka. Raziel himself had been told by the other partisans how to find it, since it was the final place of haven. A Catholic priest and hundreds of miners had barricaded themselves inside, the partisans said, and it was my hope that Gisele had made her way there.

  Raziel and I stood together in the starry night before we started walking. Despite the bruises and the weariness in Raziel’s eyes, he had never looked so beautiful. There was so much to say, it didn’t make sense to even try to say it.

  As we walked, the locket burned. My skin had developed a little locket-shaped brown patch over my heart, where the locket rested and Asmodel still struggled. Long after midnight, when we had stopped for the night to rest and hide, I caught Raziel staring at the locket, and he moved it aside to kiss the burned place and to fall asleep with his lips resting on that spot above my heart.

  I couldn’t yet bear to ask him what had happened in Krueger’s prison, not if he did not want to tell me. Both of us were in silent agreement to instead celebrate the fact we both miraculously still walked the earth. Hidden in shadows, we kissed and kissed until we fell into exhausted sleep. And we woke before dawn and rested in each other’s arms before setting off.

  We traveled by day, dangerous as that was, because Raziel and I feared the creatures of the night still more. Werewolves now roamed the countryside of Poland without restriction; the silver bullets the farmers kept in reserve were too precious to shoot, and the Nazi authorities encouraged the lycanthropes to attack.

  I had once seen Raziel kill over a dozen wolves as an angel, using nothing more than the words of the Almighty. But now, angel no more, Raziel watched over me with his wits alone. And may God help me, I loved him even more this way.

  I feared for him still. Men die. But Raziel himself felt no fear now. I knew that not because he told me—we barely spoke on our way to Wieliczka—but because he slept so well that final night, blissfully pressed against my body, his skin warm and scratchy, his body smelling of pine needles, musk, and cinnamon.

  I did not want the journey to end, but it did. We made it to the salt mine. And there our troubles truly began.

  20

  The entrance to the mine looked nothing like I had even vaguely expected. I imagined rough, rustic caves off in the wilderness somewhere, but we found the entrance to the Wieliczka salt mines framed by a large curved gate leading to a trim factory building with a huge double door facing a parking lot. The place looked closed, though the metal gate to the front drive stood ajar. The first indication of trouble was this openness, the lack of posted sentries.

  I made straight for the front entrance, but Raziel held me back. “No, you’ll be dead before you make it to the door,” he said.

  Instead we crawled through the underbrush to the edge of the parking lot and watched. Weird little fairy lights danced at the threshold of the mines, like blue fireflies.

  “The earth spirits are guarding the door, do you see?” Raziel said. “They’ve taken a side, the miners’ side, and they are guarding their hiding place.”

  Things had gotten desperate indeed if the ancient spirits of the mine had taken notice. Usually they ignored the furious buzzing of human affairs, knowing that things usually weren’t as bad as they seemed in the short term and even the worst things soon faded away.

  I sent my witch’s sight to find them, and I saw them now, outlined in blue, blind-looking women with long straight hair and interlocking arms blocking the way into the mine. Salt is a natural barrier to magicals, one of the reasons the Poles had chosen this place to hide, but these ancient ladies came up from the veins of the earth intermixed with the salt, and they were as lean and tough as hounds. Their magic was older than mine, and it rose up from the very earth we stood upon. I could not defeat them, and I did not want to; I only wanted to identify Raziel and me as their allies.

  So I plucked at their airy souls like harp strings, gently, so they vibrated, careful not to cause even the slightest pain. “Sh’ma,” I called softly, birdsong at morning, quietly as I could. “Sh’ma!”

  I saw the spirit in the center turn. Her face grew stern; I did not know her language and she did not bother making much of a distinction among human beings. All she cared about was that her humans were locked inside and the enemies outside the threshold had to be stopped. From four they became six, then seven, then a dozen, and their thin, translucent bodies pressed together to block the door.

  Earth magic, ancient and low-lying, was alien and hostile to mine, which was based in fire. Raziel had no magic in him at all, but apparently the fire that blazed within the Hebrew words profoundly troubled these earth spirits.

  The ground itself began to crumble. Quickly I sent to my sister, called to her, soul to soul. I could not send words to Gisele through that earthen barrier, but I could play upon her soul like a heartstring, and I prayed she would recognize that touch as mine.

  Before I could know for sure, the earth spirits, enraged, rushed us en masse. I threw a ward of protection between us, made it visible, flashing with fire so that they were forewarn
ed.

  They veered away, and a shower of sparks rose between us as their magic clashed against mine. I held my palms out to strengthen my intention, put my energy into the wall I had hastily constructed.

  I could not speak to these ancient spirits, could not explain we were allies. My wards could not withstand the overwhelming force of their massed assault, but there was nowhere for Raziel and me to retreat.

  Cracks appeared in the asphalt of the parking lot under our feet. A blue-lit hand reached up and grabbed Raziel around the ankle.

  I blasted witchfire down the crack, but Raziel grunted in pain and I knew I was too late. Raziel tried to yank his leg away, but even his tremendous strength was not enough to dislodge the hand.

  I drew closer and he grabbed me around the waist. I began to recite the Ninety-first Psalm—Yankel had taught it to me in Hebrew. Raziel said it with me, and the words sent down a shower of sparks.

  The first hand disappeared, but a fresh one shot out to take its place. The ground trembled beneath us, so strongly that I almost lost my balance.

  The door behind the spirits swung open and Gisele, thank goodness, ran between them, her face glowing in the fading light. She reached through my wards—there was nothing that could keep my little sister away from me—and threw her arms around me and Raziel.

  With a clap of blue lightning the earth spirits withdrew and disappeared. The three of us stood outside the slightly open door, and I dropped my aching arms around her chubby shoulders and squeezed.

  “Come—quick!” she said, her husky little voice a restorative potion. She pulled us through the door and slammed it behind us.

  * * *

  I had not expected the mines to be so cold. We descended a creaky wooden stairway that spiraled down, down, down into the damp veins of salt. Hundreds of steps, and we ran all the way down. Most of the mine was illuminated, but we passed through a long, dark corridor before we stopped in a lighted alcove to take a breath.

  We had no time for a tender family reunion.

  “It’s been terrible,” she said, and it was so cold I could see the plume of her breath. “Governor-General Krueger has decided to make an example of us. Instead of sending the regular army, he keeps sending the wolves.”

  “How can they get in? The earth spirits guard you.”

  “We are under siege here. It is good you came when you did. Soldiers patrol for mortals at dawn and the wolves come by night. The farmers have tried to bring us food but they cannot get close to us … the ones who’ve tried were murdered right outside so we could see.”

  “A siege can last a long time, regardless,” I began. But then I saw the desolation on Gisele’s face.

  “You do not know,” she whispered.

  My heart began to pound against my ribs. “Tell me.”

  “Warsaw has fallen. The Soviets have invaded on the side of the Nazis. Hitler and Stalin have carved up Poland. We are not much more than grass trampled under their feet now.”

  I thought of Levin. “Where are the Hashomer? The other partisans?” I asked.

  Gisele looked away and sighed. “Most of them are here. But Levin is dead. He killed himself after we got the news about the Russians.”

  No wonder the secret knowledge had torn him apart. Levin was a Communist, but he was also a Pole.

  We had no time to mourn his death. “All is not lost. It cannot be,” I said. My heart pounded louder. “Thousands of children got smuggled out of here, into Budapest. That is not nothing!”

  “But we are still too late.”

  “Not for them!” I had never seen my sister so bitter.

  Gisele’s laugh shattered like salt crystals under our feet. “You think the werewolves hunting us like rabbits care about Hitler? You think the demon cares about who he uses to accomplish his ends?”

  She closed in on me, grabbed me by my shoulders. And my sweet little mouse roared in my face like a lion. “My nightmares have invaded the world.”

  I swallowed again, gasped for air. “Defeat is not my problem, little star.”

  Gisele’s eyes filled again with tears, and she didn’t look away, even as the tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Then what? What do we do?”

  “I look into the abyss and don’t look away. You do, too, my darling. I see that our cause is lost, the war is lost. The only weapon I have left is hanging trapped around my neck.”

  A gentle, reproving voice rose from behind us. “Oy, children, stop fighting.”

  With Yankel’s words, despair’s spell was broken. I turned, and saw that the little potbellied watchmaker held his arms out wide. And like a child I hurled myself into his embrace and held him close.

  I cried then, I will confess. But crying was too much of a luxury, as big an indulgence as despair. Grief was a peacetime diversion, and we had to put our despair away until the war was over.

  I told them about Hans Frank and the prison, I told them everything. Raziel said nothing, but I had never seen his expression so grim. When I was done, we stood together in the sudden cold silence.

  “Give Asmodel to Yankel,” Raziel said. “The demon is too great a temptation. And Yankel can master him and use him against the Nazis. It is time to try.”

  The human weakness in Raziel’s voice cut me like a razor blade. Raziel’s spirit was steady, but his exhausted body held pain.

  “You’re right, my darling. His wickedness calls to mine.” I unclasped the chain and passed it to the old man I trusted like a second father.

  His eyebrows bunched together as he contemplated the little, dented old locket resting in his palm. “Poor, tormented soul,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he meant Asmodel or me.

  He looked up at Raziel. “His very presence is like a stab in the heart, nu?” He said it in Hebrew first, and then in Yiddish so I could understand.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Yankel said to me. “You are a special torment to Asmodel, such a nice, pretty, smart girl. But I can’t forget where you come from, mamele. You’ve been strong. But you have the dark magic in you that the demon wants. I’ll keep him. Don’t worry, you did good.”

  The locket disappeared into Yankel’s vest pocket, and I sighed with relief. “Good-bye albatross,” I said in Hungarian, and Gisele, despite her sadness and despair, laughed, a haunting sound like chimes.

  Yankel turned to Raziel and spoke with him in Hebrew for a good five minutes. I wiped at my eyes and tried my best not to care that I couldn’t understand them.

  At the end of his torrent of words, Yankel turned to me with a crooked little smile on his face. “Mamele, you don’t need a demon watching over you. You got your big man here, Raziel HaMelech. I will take the cursed one off your hands. I need to talk to the priest about this locket now, so we don’t have any misunderstandings. We’ve had enough tsouris here without the adversary coming between us.”

  Before I could ask him to tell me more about the priest, he leaned in, kissed me between the eyebrows. “I bless you that you stay as good as Sarah and Leah, woman of valor. I go speak with Jan now.” And Yankel winked and shuffled out of the room into the labyrinth of salt.

  We watched them go, and I all but sank to the ground in weariness.

  “Let’s get you fed and bundled up before you go off and die again, Magduska!”

  I looked at Gisele. “Food? But I thought you—”

  “We are under siege, but we are not done yet.” She reached up and squeezed my shoulder. “Poor sister, tempted by that awful demon. I don’t know how you found the strength to keep that locket closed.”

  Raziel, Gisele, and I ate some bread and water in a mess hall carved out of salt. The walls, the floor, even the benches were carved out of gray, translucent blocks; the effect was quite modern, as if we dined in a cafeteria of the future made of some unknown, futuristic material.

  The mess hall was full. Miners, mostly, but also ground trolls, dwarves, Gypsies, and regular families that had fled here for shelter.

  “Kraków has gone back to normal, we
hear, as if the war had never happened,” Gisele said. And I knew what she meant. Most people wanted to live their lives in peace, and they went through the wildest contortions to keep everything in their lives in place, as much as they possibly could.

  To do that, people like Gisele and me and the other people who hid in the salt mine had to become invisible. For to acknowledge the presence of hundreds of countrymen, trapped in the mine and slated for extermination by the conquerors of the city, would be to acknowledge their own normalcy as a faint, fading myth.

  “Who leads these people?”

  “The priest. He is a powerful Catholic priest, and he is determined to stop the Nazi sorcerers. But he is a Catholic. Not all Catholics hate magic, but this priest does.” Gisele leaned forward and whispered. “You can imagine what he thinks of the trolls and the Gypsies. He doesn’t like us, so we try to stay out of his way. He dislikes the magicals far more than the Jews. He’s been protecting the Jews from some of the miners, in fact, but if it weren’t for Yankel, he would have turned us away altogether.”

  “This priest, he is a fighter?”

  “He is old like Yankel, but he is fierce, and plans to defend this place to the death, even with all the women and children inside. Even the magicals. Though he doesn’t like us, at least he understands we’re on the same side. He knows as well as we do that there is nowhere else to run.”

  I had not come all this way to come under the dominion of a disapproving priest. I finished my bread and looked over the crowd one last time.

  “This is like a prison, a friendly jail,” I finally said. “I have no quarrel with the priest, but I am not going to stay penned up in here with the refugee children and learn my martyr catechism like a good little girl. Forget it.”

  Gisele sighed and shook her head. “I knew you would say something like that. But, my darling, it is terribly dangerous in Kraków, now that Poland is conquered.”

  I shrugged. “Sitting in this mess hall is worse than death. I did not come to Poland for this.”