by Michele Lang
She shrugged, then laughed. “Wisdom is overrated.” And with an astonishing boom, the air around us rushed with a sudden press of uncountable thousands of souls now manifest. My mother closed her eyes, raised her voice to sing spells I had never heard before.
The deed was done almost before I realized she had decided to act. She and I stood together in a teeming sea of souls. I was amazed to see Raziel staring slack-jawed with wonder.
I indicated Raziel with a quick tilt of my chin. “Mama, if you can shock the angels, you know you have just done something amazing.”
She did not respond—she was working far too hard—but her face lit up with the delicate joy that had entranced my father into loving her and marrying her, despite the fact she was a witch and therefore unsuitable and dangerous.
Her voice rose in a beautiful, infernal harmony, and the thousands of souls began to sing with her. I have never heard such haunting, soul-piercing voices, and as they sang, the souls manifested more and more into the shapes they had taken in life. We were surrounded by the songs of ghosts.
It was as if I were a fairy queen reviewing her gossamer court in a spring progress. The people swirling in the air all around us in the clearing wore medieval caftans, Hasidic wool, jazz suits and wide Oxford bag pants from the 1920s. They came alone, or paired with lovers, or in great laughing groups of friends, reunited in death.
I had determined for them to come, indeed was prepared to summon them myself if I had to. But the sight of them mesmerized me, and saddened me, and frightened me.
My mother stood in the midst of this whirling cavalcade of unquiet spirits, and my eyes kept looking to her most of all. Because though these ghostly ladies and gentlemen amazed and entranced me, it was my infuriating, intoxicating mother whom I loved.
She glanced my way and flicked her hand at me. “Go on, lazy! You will catch flies, standing there with your mouth hanging open.” A tiny smile of satisfaction played over her face, and she turned away, still working her dazzling magic.
Leopold had the imps; my mother had the ghosts. I trembled to think of the demons. I looked across the clearing to where Raziel still stood, holding the gun clenched in his hands. He had convinced Gisele to go back inside the idling auto, and she looked through the window at me, her palms pressed against the glass.
The wind kicked up by the ghosts whistled in the long clumps of grasses poking up between the thin birch trees, the leaves trembling and rustling over our heads.
I would not try to stop my Raziel from following me into darkness and death. Neither would I let him go alone. Because of Yankel, I knew how to raise golems, and now I called the mud up from between the roots of the trees. I used the Kabbalistic rituals he had taught me to breathe life into those mud men arranged in rows.
True magic required containment. I never understood the value of my limits until I stood in midair, a kind of demoness yet graced with my family’s magic. I had learned by now to accept myself, broken and imperfect. And my limitations themselves invested my magic with strength.
Raziel now led a column of some two hundred golems, raised from the tainted mud of the forests north of Gierloz. It was time to breach the defenses of the Wolf’s Lair.
26
In a flash, I knew how to do it. “Sh’ma,” I began, and the army behind me echoed after me, “Sh’ma,” with the ghosts filling in the silence afterward with the susurrations of uncountable Hebrew prayers, a rushing river of words.
I called the Book itself to me. The Book of Raziel has no soul but it was made for me, it called to my blood and soul. I had never in all this time thought to call the Book the way I summoned souls, the way the Book called to me. Even imprisoned and twisted by its captors, the power of the Book returned my call.
The air rumbled, and a screaming roar ripped the magical wards surrounding the lair like an enormous, invisible electrified fence. I whispered to the Book, and its power escaped the prison the Soviets had built for it. Our host pressed forward, Raziel and the golems following behind. The trees hummed with the Book’s power.
Though I had breached the wards of the lair, the wood was thick with corrupted magic. Even as a ghost, I found it hard to stay, assailed by the stench of it and by a steadily growing fear.
Where were the sentries? It was far too easy for us to breach the defenses of such a grim fortress. The ghosts kept their prayers running in an unceasing flow, and their words trailed behind us up to Heaven in a golden cloud. But their prayers alone could not explain our relatively easy progress.
We soon came upon a real wire fence, like the factories of death that Gisele had foreseen. The ghosts and I passed through, but the golems, Raziel at their head, hesitated outside the fence. He cried to them in Hebrew, and the Hebrew letters on their foreheads glowed like miners’ lamps in the darkness.
In orderly rows, they tramped forward into the fence, and the rows drawing up from behind pressed the golems into the dull wire. The sheer weight of their muddy bodies crushed the fence, and their hundreds now marched through the gap in the fence that they had made.
The earth beneath us trembled with the pounding of wolf paws. My heart leapt at the sound of it. Finally, the battle would be joined. “The wolves, Raziel,” I shouted. “Fight them, you and the golems.”
Everything depended on my getting to Asmodel and Hitler. Speed and surprise were more important than anything else, and I had to get to them before it was too late.
Asmodel was too much for me, but Hitler … even if he had willingly become a host to the demon, Hitler was still a mortal man. No matter what the wards around him, I would attack him with everything I had.
But the wolves now stood in my way. Krueger himself led his pack in defense of their pack leader supreme. He and his wolves were ready to die to protect the Glorious Reich. I was eager to oblige him. My hands burned with magical energy, aching to strike.
I gathered my power, wove the curse into my words. The wolves, hearing my voice in the clearing, sprang forward to attack.
I inserted Krueger’s name into the malefaction and I hurled it at him. The magic burned, a ball of blue fire, and it exploded in Krueger’s lupine face, blinding him and singeing the fur on his face and neck.
“Krueger! Creature of Hitler, come, come!” I drew him forward, and snarling and whining, half blinded he came, his claws digging deep furrows in the dirt. The moon shone overhead, bathing us all in her cold, silver light.
He bent at my feet, and his wolves held back, snarling, unsure of what to do. And there we stood, in something of a standoff. As long as I kept Krueger pinned, his soldiers stayed back; but they would not retreat.
All of these thoughts, buzzing in my head like a swarm of enraged bees, stayed my hand from drawing out Krueger’s soul then and there. Instead, I twisted his neck, to a point just short of strangulation, and I forced his muzzle into the dirt.
“Yield to me,” I gasped. “I am your better. Admit it—or I kill you like a dog. Now!”
Krueger struggled for air, found none. He gave a strangled little cough. His eyes rolled, then steadied. For a moment we stared into each other’s eyes, and I sensed his rage and terror as if it were my own.
“I yield,” he gasped through the foam that had formed over his jaw. I released the choke hold a fraction. He sighed and said more loudly, “I yield. You are my master.”
My mind strayed to wondering at the odd magic that allowed a wolf to speak German, and in that moment I completely lost my advantage. Before I could react, the entire pack swarmed over Krueger’s body. His own pack ripped out his throat for a traitor, and in a vicious blur they tore the very fur off of his body. Krueger died a speedy and wretched death at my astral feet, and all that was left of him when they were done was a shredded pile of gray fur and bloody meat.
In the next moment, the pack turned on us, and I swept them back with an arching spray of witchfire. They drew back, yelping, their faces scorched.
I called upon the golems. I could not compel them
to appear, as they had no souls and retained their primitive animation only through the magic of the Hebrew alphabet. But I could call to them in the holy speech and so I did.
“Sh’ma!” I yelled, using the holy prayer as a locus for my summoning. The golems crashed through the low underbrush and they advanced on the Nazi dogs, muddy arms outstretched as if they were mummies. The wolves sank their teeth into their limbs but only got a mouthful of crumbling dirt for their trouble, and one or two of them were crushed to death under the immense weight of four or five golems collapsing over their skulls and burying them with their disintegrating, pebbly bodies.
We lost a lot of golems, with not a lot of effect. Only three wolves down, including Krueger, still nearly a dozen wolves left, all with great slashing yellow fangs, all of them eager to rip out Raziel’s throat.
Running was not a possibility. I gathered my strength and prepared to go after them again. But before I could press forward, a blur to my left ran ahead, bellowing in Hebrew, drawing the golems forward to flank him. It was Raziel, holding the silver knife out and swinging it like a wild man of the forest.
The wolves were wary, suspecting a trick. Raziel leapt for the nearest one and landed on its back, twisting its tail to drive it mad. “Come, you dirty dogs!” he shouted in Hungarian. “I kill you now!”
The wolf he rode twisted around to snap at Raziel’s leg. With incredible speed Raziel pulled the pin on a grenade from his pocket, shoved it down the wolf’s gullet, and jumped free.
Raziel staggered backward, instinctively we covered our heads, and a moment later the grenade detonated, splattering wolf guts everywhere. I looked up to see Raziel covered in blood, still wielding the knife.
Before any of us could react he leapt onto the next wolf’s back, yanked its throat back and expertly slit its throat. All of us, wolf, ghost, and human, gaped at that feat—that tough, gray fur was supposedly immune to the bite of iron or steel. But not silver.
A great spume of blood sprayed from the wolf’s neck, and he turned to snap at Raziel’s arm even as he died. Raziel yanked his arm free and, covered in wolf blood, he brandished the knife, laughing like a madman.
He frightened even the ghosts nearly as badly as he did the wolves, and all of us drew back. The remaining wolves growled and Raziel lunged for them again.
He had called their bluff and they turned and fled into the forest depths, howling for their dead comrades.
Our tormenter, Viktor’s killer, Krueger, the second governor-general of the Protectorate of Poland, was dead. It wasn’t nearly enough.
We swarmed forward now and found the fortress at the center of the compound, half buried in the feculent dirt of the lair. The very worms under our feet were infected by the malign magic here.
I blasted the front doors with a ball of blue witchfire and we hurled ourselves into the breach. But even as I flew through the massive, now-shattered doorway, I still worried.
Raziel echoed my fears. “That was much too easy,” he called to me, where I floated at the level of his shoulder a few meters ahead of him.
“They want us to come,” I said. “It must be a trap. Go back, Raziel, you and the golems. Trample the fence, open the place to the forest.”
Even as he ran, Raziel shook his head. “No,” he said, sounding like a true Lazarus now. “I am coming with you to fight until the end. It is time to finish this.”
In this terrible place of judgment I was grateful neither of us faced this final trial alone.
27
We swept forward, and one by one I shattered the wards of each sector of the lair. Our horde of unquiet spirits screamed and roared as we neared the center of the compound. No matter what happened to us, the lair would be useless as a stronghold when we were done.
We came to an enormous central hall, half buried like the entrance to an enormous wolf’s den. This was a place of malevolence, where Teutonic and satanic rites were practiced. Hitler had taken a wolf lodge, a refuge for the pack, and invested it with horrible evil. Built it into a huge bunker that could house two thousand men.
And the wolves had willingly sworn fealty to this perversion.
A great host of Nazis sat on chairs set in rows in the central hall. They were all waiting for us, as Romans waited for entertainment in the Colosseum.
Hitler sat on a throne on a dais above this small, select army, his mouth lightly covered with frothy drool. His eyes were dull, and glowed faintly red. Asmodel had already taken up residence inside.
My spirits sank. I was too late.
He gripped the armrests and leered at me, seeing me with Asmodel’s demonic vision. “You have done most magnificently, fräulein,” Hitler said in his own voice. Asmodel was permitting him to speak.
The ghostly mob behind me churned with anger. Their energy augmented my power. I drew forward, and stood alone before the enemy of my people, the enemy of all that was good and true on Earth.
It was the first time I had met Adolf Hitler face-to-face. Asmodel had come upon my summons to Budapest in Hitler’s guise, but he was only a sending, not the physical man. But now I spoke to the mortal man who had already caused so much misery and destruction.
“You will now die,” I said in German.
Hitler threw his head back and laughed and laughed derisively. This laughter echoed and screamed through the army of Nazis in the great hall.
“You cannot touch me,” Hitler said. “You are not the first to try. It is my destiny to prevail over you.”
He had his own version of a prophecy to believe in. “Destiny is not set in stone. No prophecy foretold this moment.”
His smile faded. I stared into his eyes, saw Asmodel staring back at me. He snarled in an ancient language, but he could not touch me. I had bound Asmodel with his own vows.
But Asmodel didn’t have to touch me to hurt me. “Schutzstaffel!” he screamed. “Macht schnell!”
A squad of men dressed in black SS uniforms fanned out in formation from behind the throne and attacked—not me, they couldn’t really touch me. Instead they attacked Raziel directly. The golems formed a ring around him, and killed dozens and dozens of the men, but more kept coming.
The battle turned into a melee. When the men in chairs saw that the SS could not take Raziel alone, they rose on Hitler’s screamed command and attacked. All the mortal men saw was a single man, Raziel, and two hundred unarmed soldiers made of mud. He looked an easy target.
Raziel was not. The Germans were swarmed by ghosts, and though the ghosts could not take them physically, they could manifest and haunt them, terrify them. Each soldier was besieged by a ghost, blinding him with terrible images, moaning in his ears. The soldiers began to fall around us, not dead, but shrieking in fear and horror.
I called to Leo and the army of imps. “Now, Leo! Now!” A swarm of imps assailed the soldiers, and unlike the ghosts, these creatures could hurt their enemies. The room echoed with cries, gunshots, the cacophony of war.
Asmodel screamed through Hitler’s mouth. A terrible miasma of evil shook the fortress to its foundations.
Unbelievably, the demon was working magic through Hitler’s human body. According to legend, the rules of the world, such a thing was not supposed to be possible.
Someone like Hitler wasn’t supposed to be possible, either. I had learned to be skeptical of mere legends. Perhaps the Soviet psychotronics had somehow granted Asmodel this unprecedented ability.
Asmodel’s magic smelled of pus, of rot, of excrement. The stench of it filled the air, to the very rafters of the hall. I choked on the smell but stood my ground. Awful as Asmodel’s demonic magic was, with the power of my own host behind me I now believed I could still best it.
I swept forward and hurled a huge ball of witchfire at the Führer. Hitler screamed again, this time in pain, and the throne toppled backward; the fire burned him from head to toe. Asmodel belched curses and doused the fire, but I had inflicted a physically lethal blow.
Hitler staggered to his feet, skin pe
eling off his face and exposed hands. He screamed again, a malefaction in German, but I dodged the curse and it instead landed on the nearest Nazi soldier behind me. He writhed in pain, fell to his hands and knees, and died, a charred, blackened carcass.
I gathered up another ball of witchfire. One more blast, and Hitler’s body could stand no more abuse. Asmodel could not animate a corpse.
But everything around us abruptly stopped and I held my fire.
They had gotten Raziel, disarmed him, and held him fast. Three or four men dragged him forward and threw him at Hitler’s feet.
He rose again, and they tackled him and hit and kicked him until he was still. My Raziel knelt at the feet of Adolf Hitler.
I drew forward, witchfire trained on the Führer. “Back,” he snarled. “Or I will drink his blood right now.”
I hesitated. Raziel was the source of my strength. But he was also my greatest weakness in this terrible battle to the death and beyond.
There the four of us stood, air spirit, Führer and the demon possessing him, and fallen angel. Centuries of enmity and strife had brought us to this moment, on an altar dedicated to evil. It was the moment of Asmodel’s triumph over his eternal enemy: Raziel.
“You will be my sacrifice,” Hitler hissed. And it was Hitler who spoke, not Asmodel. Hitler’s evil was thick and opaque; the demon and his ancient rivalry all just a tool, a potion he ingested to work his evil on a more profound level. “Your Almighty will not save you now. Go on! Call to Him! See if He answers you!”
I swallowed hard. Raziel looked up slowly from where he crouched. “Sh’ma Israel,” he began, in a low steady voice. The host of spirits echoed his words in unison, filling the great hall with Hebrew, arching out with great golden slashing wings of fire.
The Almighty did not answer him. But thousands of human voices did. The din was enormous.
“Stop it!” Asmodel snarled through Hitler’s mouth. But it was too late to silence the voices from beyond the grave.
