Dark Victory

by Michele Lang

  The prayer echoed in that vast hall and finally faded away. It could not save Raziel.

  The SS men drew forward, grabbed him under his shoulders, and dragged him to his feet. I rushed to him, but Hitler held up a hand. “Stand back,” he said. “He is in my power now. Make a move to stop this and I will torture him, I will cause him infinite suffering in this world and beyond.”

  I refused to obey him, but before I could take another step forward, Hitler himself stepped off the dais, grabbed Raziel by the hair, and in a single movement slit his throat with his own silver knife.

  I rushed the circle. But I had reached him too late.

  Raziel was dead. Now I had nothing left to lose.

  28

  “You broke your vow somehow, you infernal bastard,” I said to Asmodel.

  He shrugged with Hitler’s shoulders. “I didn’t do it. Hitler did it. I only stood aside and let him.”

  Raziel’s spirit shot to Heaven, through the roof, and my mother and the entire host of spirits saw him on his way. I let them all go, for their sakes as well as Raziel’s. These ghosts had already been through enough and they had done all that they could. Raziel would lead them upward; that in truth was what my angel had been made to do.

  But I was made of darker materials. I turned to Asmodel and Hitler, a huge ball of witchfire writhing between my palms. One last shot and the Führer would be burned to a crisp. As dead as Raziel. And my vengeance would have only just begun.

  “Do it,” he whispered through Hitler’s lips, even as the Führer’s eyes widened in terror at the sight of me and my punishing fire. “Finish it now.”

  I trembled with my lust to do it, Raziel’s body crumpled at my feet, his blood seeping into the horrible stone of the lair, already soaked with uncountable oceans of sacrificial blood.

  But I let the witchfire dissipate, the blue flames dissolving into wisps of smoke. “I have sworn my own vow,” I whispered. “You are Hitler’s master now, Asmodel. You are not mine. I will not do your bidding.”

  Hitler began to jitter and twitch like a marionette tangled in his strings. “Kill me!” Asmodel shrieked through Hitler’s now-resisting vocal cords. Asmodel wanted Hitler dead.

  Why?

  I fought to think through my rage and grief. My beloved lay dead at my feet, on my account; so many people had died on my account, to further our desperate aims. To stop history itself from happening.

  “Kill me,” Hitler moaned and shrieked, his body now convulsing. He ripped at his shredded skin with his own fingers and screamed in pain, and I am ashamed to admit I enjoyed his suffering, I wanted to kill him for all that he had done, for all that Hitler aspired still to do.

  “You want him dead, Asmodel,” I snarled. “You do it. I will not serve your bidding.”

  “Stiff-necked fool,” Asmodel snarled back. Hitler’s famous mustache was now clotted with snot, drool, and blood. “You have the scourge of the world in your power. Your beloved is murdered at his hand. You cowardly little bitch.”

  I had had enough. I gathered the witchfire back into my palms, but instead of blasting Hitler I smote the walls of the lair itself. The entire place shattered around us, the walls blasting apart, the humans, wolves, and chairs flying outward in a circle from the explosion.

  Hitler and I alone stood in what was left. The watery light of dawn filtered down from Heaven. Day had come. Hitler still lived.

  “I am no ghost, to fade by morning,” I said.

  “So kill me, bitch,” Asmodel said. His words slurred through Hitler’s twisted, unwilling lips.

  “You tempt me, Asmodel,” I replied. “It was far too easy to breach the defenses of this place. You wanted me to hunt you. You wanted me to find Hitler, to kill him. Why?”

  We stared at each other for what seemed like forever. “Because then you would be mine,” Asmodel said at last. “And we could finally re-create the Garden.”

  “This?” I looked around the twisted, stinking wreckage of the lair, now exposed to the light of day. “This is your Garden, Asmodel. You may tend to it yourself. I won’t do your work for you.”

  I had often said I knew my limitations. This was the first moment I truly realized them, and accepted them. I was right to let Asmodel go; he destroyed and ruined everything he touched.

  And he devoured Hitler, he raped him from the inside. Asmodel was a worse punishment of the Führer than any clean death I could devise. And killing Hitler would not stop the killing. Asmodel would simply pick up where Hitler left off, using me or any human being as host. Hitler or another would leap farther down the path of destruction that he had set in motion. A million Kruegers just waited for the chance.

  And I could not stop Asmodel. Not by myself. I knew my limits, and that knowledge saved me.

  I floated backward. “Tend your Garden,” I whispered. Then, much more slowly, I ascended, following the silvery traces of Raziel’s passing as he had risen.

  I left the smoking ruins of the Wolf’s Lair behind. Adolf Hitler, still willingly possessed, still consumed with hatred, stood alone in the ruins, burned and torn, surrounded by blood and death.

  29

  No Tekla, no Raziel greeted me in the afterworld. I was fair game for any demonic being that happened upon me; more than ever before I was a lost soul, wandering the intermediate plane between life and death.

  I accepted my fate. Despite the fact that Hitler still lived, though terribly maimed, I knew I had made the least bad of all the bad choices I had been given to make. Killing Hitler would have led to worse destruction than leaving him alive, slowly murdered by his parasite, Asmodel.

  Asmodel would try to keep him alive for as long as possible. But Asmodel destroyed everything he tried to possess. For Asmodel, poor Asmodel, did not know limits. He refused to bow his head to the greater plan of the world, and so he made a hell of every plane he occupied.

  The gray nothingness stretched infinitely before me, and I wandered for some time, utterly alone, through puffy gray clouds. But I did not descend into the lower realms. I grieved, but I was at peace.

  A flickering star grew larger and larger, glowing silver, then gold. I watched it come, and its beauty stopped my astral heart.

  I hoped it was Raziel. But it wasn’t.

  It was Yankel Horowitz, the watchmaker of Kraków.

  “Sweetheart, what are you doing wandering around here?” he said, in the language of angels.

  I half laughed, half cried. “I don’t know,” I finally said.

  “You want to follow me? You did enough, you know. You can come to the next world, relax. I’ll help you find your way.”

  I hesitated. “Did you see Raziel?”

  He shrugged and scratched his nose. “Raziel HaMelech? He’s a bigger cheese than I’ll ever be, pretty girl. I’m sure he’s where he is supposed to be.”

  Yankel’s kind solicitude broke my heart. I hugged him on the astral plane, and tears streamed down my face. “Bless you, holy man. You have better things to do than babysit me. I still have some work to do. Go to your reward, righteous one.”

  “No, I won’t leave you lost up here.” He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, not a harsh wolf whistle but a gentle sound like a mourning dove.

  The plane of nothingness was filled with the rustling of infinite, invisible wings. With a sudden burst of inspiration I called, “Albion! Albion!”

  The angel of England appeared before us, first one wing, then another, brightening and brightening until the clouds surrounding us glowed with glory.

  And in her care, looking somewhat abashed but none the worse for wear, were two handsome young men. One Viktor Mandelstam, and a certain fallen angel I knew, Raziel, the one who kept the secrets of God.

  “I won’t go back without you,” I said with some urgency, before anyone else had the chance to speak or even say hello. “I can’t live without you, Raziel.”

  “Don’t play small, Miss Lazarus,” Albion said in a prim voice, her angelic speech inflected with
a lovely British accent.

  “You sound just like my mother,” I said. Sadness began to pull me downward, but Raziel slipped his hand into mine and pulled me back up.

  “I mean it, my darling,” I said, and I faced Raziel. “You are my soul mate. I understand now why my mother didn’t come back to Earth after my father died and she followed him here.”

  “We don’t always get to decide these things,” Raziel began, but Albion raised a hand and stopped him.

  “Peace, my brother,” she said. “Unless you defy the One’s decree, go forth and do what you must.” Albion hesitated and looked around.

  “Nobody said anything, and I’ll see you on your way. So get out of here,” she said quickly, in a low voice, looking so furtive and clandestine, another one of Churchill’s spies, that I couldn’t help but laugh.

  I turned to face Viktor. “You were an angel to me in Kraków,” I said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “You have nothing to thank me for,” Viktor said. “Bless you. Raziel is with you now, so you need a new guardian angel up here. Yankel is going to ascend too high for that job, so…”

  “I’ll make sure he learns quickly,” Albion interjected. “I have a feeling you are going to keep him very, very busy.”

  I swallowed the huge lump in my throat. What Viktor offered me from beyond was far greater than any words of thanks I could offer. I simply nodded, and Viktor smiled back. He would continue the fight from here, in the next world.

  I squeezed Raziel’s hand harder. “Are you ready, my darling?”

  His smile was so bright it dazzled my eyes. “Ready for anything, Magduska. Life is calling.”

  “Okay, then, my love. Hold on tight. This is going to hurt.”

  I recited the Lazarus family spell, and both Raziel and I shot back to Earth in a needle of light. We left the angels behind in Heaven.

  * * *

  We were lucky. Or perhaps Albion had interceded more than she was strictly supposed to. Raziel’s body had come to rest next to mine at the edge of the wood, next to Bathory’s auto. A last golem had collapsed, carrying my love’s dead weight, and the remains of his muddy body cushioned Raziel from the road. Gisele knelt next to our bodies, weeping not with grief but with the effort of her exhortations.

  I shot into my body with a groan. The pain of the knife slash to my heart hurt like the devil. But before I turned to my own fatal wound I set to repairing Raziel’s, because he had no magic to hold him in his body once he returned.

  Even as I began healing the vivid slash to his throat Raziel came back to the living. With a groan, he tried to sit up, but Gisele touched his shoulder.

  “Rest, dear angel, let Magda help you. That’s right.”

  I whispered the rest of the spell, my teeth gritted against the pain. Once I saw Raziel would live, I started working on myself.

  I was almost done when a shadow fell over my face. It was Janos, leaning forward, his molelike eyes squinting behind their heavy spectacles in the soft morning light.

  “Miss,” he said. “Miss. May I suggest you hurry?”

  I blinked hard and whispered the final invocation. With a gasp I forced myself to my feet; I knew what Janos meant.

  With Albion’s help, Raziel and I had done the impossible, returned from the dead. But the four of us and Bathory’s elegant, lonely automobile were surrounded by thousands and thousands of Nazis. Hitler was still in power, willingly possessed by the terrible, beautiful Asmodel. Our position was still precarious, to put it nicely.

  “We smashed apart the lair,” I said in a low gasp. “That will slow Hitler down a bit, at least. Let’s get out of here before they get their bearings.”

  Janos’s face fell. “So the evil man is still alive,” he murmured, his composure for once shaken.

  “Yes, he is, thank the Maker,” I said. “He will be the instrument of the demon’s destruction, in the end. And the demon will destroy him in turn.”

  “If that is a victory, miss,” the driver said, “I tremble to contemplate defeat.”

  “I guess it all depends on your frame of reference,” I said, tired to the bone. We got in, and Janos started to drive.

  30

  OCTOBER 22, 1939: 10 P.M.

  CAFÉ ISTANBUL

  BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

  By Hand Delivery

  To Magdalena Lazarus

  c/o the vampire Bathory, chief vampire of Budapest

  My dear Hungarian witch,

  Brava, and brava again. I cannot call upon the angels the way that you do, but whispering spirits tell me that you have put quite a dent in the Nazi war machine. Oh, the papers put about that Herr Hitler was burned in a curious electrical fire, but I know the truth. He is recovering, but from all reports the Führer will never be the same.

  I am, to be frank about it, quite pleased. You have bought Britain time, time to arm against the Hun. Every extra day we gain before Hitler turns his ambitions westward is another day to build munitions, call upon our soldiers, prepare our fair island to defend against Nazi attack.

  And there is no honor amongst thieves. There are rumors that Stalin and Hitler have already fallen out. Stalin, too, buys time, but Hitler grows impatient already, I hear. This is an educated guess, but one that I believe you will make good use of: Hitler will make a break for the Caucasus oil fields, and sooner than I had thought. Hitler needs oil to run his war machine, however much you have dented it. Once he seeks to invade the Caucasus, Hitler will enrage the Russian Bear.

  And you will be ready, dear Lady Lazarus, won’t you? Knox, who has delivered this letter for me, believes that what you seek is also in the Caucasus. And he wanted you to know this fact, particularly.

  Most important, know that your sister has arrived safely to our shores, with the assistance of both Knox and Bathory. She will stay at Chartwell until we have found her a more suitable place. She is very quiet, and very sweet, your little sister. But she is possessed of your family’s dark and terrible fire as well. She is not such a dreamy little mouse as you described at our dinner at Chartwell.

  Please find enclosed a small token of my esteem. I had Knox take the trouble of changing it from British pounds to Hungarian pengös, as those will be more useful to you. I would have sent you gold, but Knox would not have been able to carry this much so easily.

  I bid you well, my dear. Your former employer has reportedly been restored in Budapest, above his former position, so I am hopeful this letter finds you in fine fettle.

  With all good wishes,

  Your obt. servant,

  Sir Winston Churchill

  I sat in the Istanbul of an evening in late October, my beloved Raziel at my side. Only a faint scar now remained of the terrible slash under his chin, but Raziel bore other scars, ones that could not be seen. It had been a long and hellacious month, getting out of Poland and back to Hungary once again.

  It was like Heaven, or a dream. Once more I sat in the Istanbul Café, once more the rumballs, the heavy enameled coffee cups, the gilded, Levantine opulence of the place. And holding court in the middle of all of it, Bathory, restored to his rightful spot in the center of the Hungarian universe.

  Bathory read the letter to us in English and translated into Hungarian as he went along. I stirred my coffee long after my lump of sugar had melted away, and Raziel played with the brim of his fedora, lost in thought as Churchill’s words unspun over our table at the Istanbul.

  Bathory finished reading Churchill’s missive, and folded up the heavy, cream-colored paper and returned it to its envelope. And I wondered at the strange miracle of befriending this Englishman, a man who worked no magic yet was possessed of so much temporal power.

  We sat in silence after Bathory had done. “So Knox has gone?” I finally asked.

  “Of course,” Bathory replied. “Hungary is distinctly unsafe at the moment for Knox. Not even I may protect him completely, here. Knox has nobody like Eva to speak for him, hidden in high places.” And, terrifyingly, Bathor
y smiled.

  “The letter says your position is restored, dear Count,” I said. “What has the Vampirrat of Budapest to say of this?”

  “Oh, them.” Bathory’s thin, bony fingers caressed the edges of the envelope. “I got rid of them.”

  Raziel and I exchanged a glance. I decided not to press the matter further.

  “Now that I have heard what Mr. Churchill has had to say, I have a matter to discuss, dear sir,” I said. “War still rages. For the moment, the Soviet Union is a fellow ally of the Reich.”

  I took a deep breath, and went ahead. “After hearing of Churchill’s suspicions, I now wish to visit our friends, the carpet merchants.”

  “The Azeris, eh?” After reading Churchill’s missive, Count Bathory was not all that surprised.

  “Yes. I think that I will find there what they seek.”

  An Azeri rebel had come in supplication to Count Bathory the previous summer, hunting for a superweapon his people believed could free them from Soviet domination. I more than suspected they sought the gem of Raziel, the Sapphire Heaven.

  “I believe it is in their land.”

  “In the Caucasus?” Bathory cocked an eyebrow at me. “In the oilfields?”

  “In the Garden,” Raziel said with a gasp, and I saw he understood the reason I staked our venture on a guess. The fertile lands of the Caucasus, I believed, were the physical locus of the ancient Garden of Eden. The gem of Raziel had returned to its source. Asmodel had unwittingly given me the idea.

  And I believed I now had both the courage and the magic to hunt the Sapphire Heaven. The gem could not be sullied. It remained in its pure, original form. It was a prize beyond all measure.

  “We are leaving in two days, as soon as I can change over Churchill’s pengös,” I said. I reached for Raziel’s fingers and gently squeezed. “As long as you are ready to go, my love.”

  “But you have only just arrived,” Bathory said. “Give yourself a rest, my little chicken.”

  “My enemies refuse to rest, dear count,” I replied.

  I studied the rim of the coffee cup by my elbow as I went on. “We have only two days in Budapest. But it’s time enough for a short honeymoon.” And I looked sidelong at Bathory and smiled.