Winter

by Rod Rees

  Crowley chuckled. “I am afraid that is not possible, Daemon; you have a leading role to play in the little drama we will be enacting tonight. Your cooperation is essential.”

  “Go screw yourself. I’m not cooperating while a prick like you tries to steal my body.”

  He moved toward her. “The options you have, Daemon, are stark. You either cooperate in the performing of the Rite of Transference or you will be disposed of. If you refuse I will ensure that you die in the most painful and prolonged manner.” His lips were so close to Norma’s ear that she could feel his sweet breath on her cheek. “I will have you drained of blood, drip by drip by drip. Do you understand?”

  Out of the corner of her eye Norma caught a glimpse of the Witchfinder running his tongue over his fleshy lips.

  Yeah, I understand, you mad bastard, and I’ve got a sneaking idea who would volunteer to do it.

  Norma reluctantly acquiesced; anything was better than that piece of shit being given the free run of her body.

  With a self-satisfied smirk of triumph, Crowley gestured to one of his adepts. “If you would ask the Lady Aaliz to join us.”

  Aaliz, when she entered the cavern, looked entirely different in appearance from the clean-cut RightNix girl whom Norma had met at Dashwood Manor. Her blond hair had been dyed a raven black. Her ears were circled with piercings, which, as far as Norma could see, were decorated with the studs taken from her own ears. And she now had a Celtic cross tattooed on her shoulder, the design copied from the one Norma sported.

  To all intents and purposes, Aaliz Heydrich was now Norma Williams. And Norma realized that with her hair dyed blond and her studs removed, she was now Aaliz Heydrich.

  As she watched Aaliz Heydrich strut across the floor of the cavern, Norma experienced a weird out-of-body sensation. It was as though she were watching herself walk toward her. And that was when she noticed the weird difference between herself and Aaliz: Aaliz was her mirror image. Everything about her was reversed: they had inscribed the Celtic cross tattoo on Aaliz’s right shoulder rather than on the left. She could tell by the way Aaliz used her left hand to brush back an errant trail of hair that she favored that hand; Norma would have used her right. Even the parting in her hair was to the right, while Norma’s was to the left.

  Freaky.

  And when Norma thought about it, she realized that the majority of Demi-Mondians were left-handed.

  Crowley’s voice cut through her reverie. “Tomorrow, at dawn, the power of the Goddess of Fertility, Freyja, will claim the world from the frosted grip of Goddess Skadi. The blossoming of dawn’s light will signal the Goddess Freyja’s rise to dominance in the Demi-Monde and the rebirth of the world. And when this light falls on the Lady Aaliz it will also signal her rebirth in the Spirit World.” He turned to his gathered disciples. “Let us prepare.”

  The Witchfinder stood behind Norma. She felt his scuffed fingers fidgeting at the bows that tied the straps of her dress, felt a tug as the bows were undone and felt the dress slipping from her shoulders, sighing to the ground to leave her standing naked.

  Crowley eyed her slim, naked body hungrily.

  She had read about the prurient, vile things Crowley—when he had been a black magician in the Real World—had persuaded his disciples to do to conjure Spirits, had read about the degenerate and bestial antics he and his supplicants got up to in the place he called the Abbey of Thelema. Her flesh crawled when she thought about the bastard so much as touching her.

  She saw that Aaliz Heydrich had been similarly stripped. Now the two girls stood stark naked facing each other across the cavern. The Witchfinder didn’t know where to look first.

  “You, Daemon,” announced Crowley, “will be adorned with the Runes of Power and the incantations that will demand the Spirits manifest themselves.”

  For the next half-hour Norma was obliged to stand stock-still as Crowley’s adepts daubed designs and emblems over her naked body, culminating in the drafting of the sign of the Valknut on her forehead. When she looked up, she found that Aaliz Heydrich’s body had been similarly decorated.

  Crowley circled the two naked girls, examining his disciples’ handiwork. “You should know, Daemon, that all magic is about harnessing man’s natural power through the application of the magician’s will. Willpower is the essence of all magic. Through the sublimation of your natural powers to my will, I will be able to direct and order the Spirits. But where is this natural power of man most evident? The answer lies in the sexual appetites of men and women. Sexual lust is the natural companion of magic; wed sex and magic and a psychic engine of vast occult potency is created.”

  Crowley must have seen the look of mounting horror that dressed Norma’s face. He chuckled. “Do not be alarmed, Daemon, I am not suggesting that you participate in a sexual ritual. Far from it; with both you and the Lady Aaliz being pure in body you exert a huge attraction to the Spirit World. Your beauty, your purity and your latent, unexpressed sexual appetites, Daemon, will stimulate my adepts to heights of sexual desire, and thus stimulated they will generate all the sexual energy necessary to bind the Demi-Monde with the Spirit World.” He clapped his hands in triumph. “But first we must have the Sacrifice of Blood.”

  CROCKETT PUFFED CONTENTEDLY ON HIS CLAY PIPE. “DID MISS TRIXIEBELL listen, Major?” he asked from his perch on a crate in the warehouse that Baron Dashwood’s regiment had made its home.

  “No.”

  “So what are we going to do, sir?”

  Baron Dashwood was torn. He was an officer and a gentleman so his first instinct was to do what he was ordered to do by his commanding officer. That his commanding officer was also his daughter made the prospect of ignoring those orders even more difficult. But he was certain that the WFA were being led into a trap and whilst he had a responsibility to Trixie and the WFA he also had a responsibility to the two hundred men under his command.

  It was a difficult, an impossible decision, and unfortunately it was one he had to make quickly: there were only fifteen minutes left until the breakout began. He looked around at the men huddled in the warehouse—many of them the Poles he had freed from the work camp. He couldn’t betray these men; he couldn’t allow them to be needlessly killed or captured by the SS.

  He loved Trixie but . . .

  The irritating thing was that it was his own arrogance that had brought him to this: if he hadn’t assumed that Heydrich was just a vicious idiot then he would have realized that it was he who was being played for a fool, that it was he who was being played as a patsy. How Heydrich and his cronies must have laughed when he swallowed their charade about the ForthRight attacking the Coven. How they must have howled when they allowed him to escape from Dashwood Manor knowing that he would warn his Royalist friends in the Coven and in this way reinforce Heydrich’s little pantomime. How could he have been so stupid as to have underestimated them? How could he have forgotten how cunning these bastards were? But the game wasn’t over yet. Maybe they had underestimated him.

  “We’re not going to Westgate with the rest of the army,” he said finally. “That’s what the SS want us to do. We’re going to get out through Southgate and then head east to the river and down into the Hub. Assemble the regiment, Captain Crockett. If we’re challenged by the SS we’ll tell them we’re an Anglo regiment being reassigned to the attack on the Quartier Chaud. Tell the men they’re only to fire as a last resort. We’ll escape the Ghetto using guile, not muscle.”

  Crockett gave the baron a salute. “Sounds like an excellent idea to me, Major, I always had a strange aversion to fighting to the last man.”

  FOR TRIXIE THE FINAL BATTLE OF THE WARSAW UPRISING WAS THE worst experience of her short military career. It was the one she came closest to losing.

  Despite the reinforcements, despite the confusion caused in the SS ranks when her father had smashed his way into the Ghetto, despite the best efforts of her fighters, the breakout soon degenerated into chaos.

  As the first of them vaulted the
barricades shortly before twelve, Trixie knew that it would be a murderous night. Within seconds the battle had become a fire-racked confusion, and the fighters of the WFA were cut down in swaths as they desperately fought their way through the ruins of the city toward Westgate. The carnage was terrible and Trixie sensed that outnumbered and outgunned, they were doomed.

  The weather saved them from complete annihilation. It was the last night of Winter and the season had obviously determined to go out with a flourish. The blizzard that swept through the Ghetto was as bad as any she had ever experienced, so bad that it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, to distinguish snow-covered friend from snow-covered foe. These last savage snows of Winter churned with the smoke from burning steamers and smoldering buildings to make the Ghetto a scene from Hel.

  But even shrouded by the blizzard, the losses were terrible. After an hour of the bitterest fighting of the whole Uprising, only a battered remnant of the WFA smashed its way to Westgate. And there in the smoke- and snow-drenched darkness, the Poles and the SS grappled with each other in hate-filled fury, their firefight enveloping the gateway.

  But in the end the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Poles triumphed and Trixie led her fighters out of the Ghetto.

  THE FIGHTING PROVIDED THE PERFECT COVER OF CHAOS AND MAYHEM for Ella, Vanka and Rivets—together, of course, with Ella’s twelve dutiful disciples—to make their escape.

  But rather than going toward the river as Ella had expected, Vanka headed for Middlegate and what with the weather and the darkness, and the fighting being concentrated towards the Boundary side of the Ghetto, they were able to evade the few SS patrols there were and come safe into Odessa. The reason Vanka had led them there was made clear when they were crouched by a barbed-wire fence that surrounded what looked like a flat, treeless playing field.

  “Where are we?” whispered Ella as she scrolled through PINC.

  Vanka was quicker with his answer. “Welcome to the John Hanning Speke Balloon-O-Drome, home to the First Aerial Detachment of the ForthRight Observation Corps.”

  Ella peered out into the darkness that shrouded the Balloon-O-Drome. There, gently swaying in the breeze, she could just make out the bulbous form of a balloon. The penny dropped. “You mean us to fly to ExterSteine?”

  Vanka nodded enthusiastically. “It’s the only way. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go up in a balloon. We’re fifteen miles from ExterSteine and it’s only”—he checked his watch—“five hours to dawn and as the wind shifts to the east between midnight and six in the morning it’s a perfect time. By my reckoning ExterSteine is almost due east, so all we’ll do is let the wind carry us in that direction until we see the standing stones and then let out the hydrogen from the balloon and—”

  “Crash?”

  “Sink gracefully to the ground,” he corrected. “Look, Ella, I know it’s a pretty madcap sort of scheme but unless you can think of a better way of us getting to ExterSteine before dawn, this is all that’s on offer.”

  “It’s madness.”

  “You’re not frightened of heights, are you?”

  “It’s not the heights that frighten me, it’s the depths that come rushing up to greet you when you crash that I’ve always found discouraging.”

  “Don’t worry, Ella, flying can’t be that difficult.”

  “You’re not suggesting you’re going to fly it!”

  “Of course,” answered Vanka casually. “Who else? Anyway, it’ll be fun!”

  “Fun? That’s a hydrogen balloon you’re talking about; one bullet and we’ll be toast.”

  “It’s night; no one will see us.”

  “What about the guards? They’re not just gonna let us waltz in and steal one of their balloons.”

  “Most of them will be drunk by now. It’s Spring Eve and everybody gets drunk on Spring Eve. And if there are any guards who aren’t drunk then your Disciples will settle them.”

  Before Ella quite knew what was happening Vanka flourished a pair of wire-cutters, cut a hole in the fence and she was running behind him toward the balloon. All the guards protecting the Balloon-O-Drome must have been drunk as no one challenged them, or maybe none of them believed that anyone would be mad enough to steal a balloon. Closer to, the balloon looked enormous but very fragile. The canvas of the cover was stretched over a thin bamboo frame, and the basket that hung beneath was woven from what looked to be wholly inadequate wicker.

  “There isn’t room for more than two or three people in that basket. What are the rest of us going to do?”

  “Don’t worry about them,” answered Vanka. “Rivets will come with us—he’s only little. The rest will be all right. They’re tough guys and they’ll make their way to the Quartier somehow. But I think they’d appreciate it if you said a few words of thanks before we go.”

  “How about a prayer?” suggested Ella, only partly in jest.

  ONCE OUT OF THE GHETTO, IT WAS EVERY MAN AND WOMAN FOR themselves. It was impossible for Trixie to control or to command the survivors of the WFA. So far as she could judge, the chance of their being able to fight through Odessa and St. Petersburg to the Anichkov Bridge was very slim.

  But the peculiar thing was that now, when they were at their most vulnerable, the SS threat had receded. There were still firefights going on all around the perimeter of the Ghetto, but not with quite the intensity of before. It seemed that—despite her father’s misgivings—their plan to escape through Westgate had worked: there were hardly any regular ForthRight Army soldiers defending the route south through Rodina to the Coven. But there was still a march of almost fifteen miles ahead of them and by the look of her soldiers that would be fifteen miles too far.

  Wysochi provided the solution. Using a sharp tongue and a blunt boot, he drove the fighters up onto their feet and off searching for steamers. These he commandeered at the point of a rifle, and soon a veritable motorized regiment was puffing through the streets of Rodina, each steamer crammed full of fighters. It took them an hour to get to the Anichkov Bridge, and as the convoy wheezed to a halt by the side of the Volga River, she could see that now just the half-mile span of the bridge separated the WFA from the safety of Rangoon.

  But as Trixie studied the bridge, her father’s observation began to trouble her. She had expected the whole length of the St. Petersburg bank of the Volga to be alive with ForthRight assault troops as they prepared to attack the Coven, but it was virtually empty. Certainly, there was a sizable force of SS defending the bridge, but that’s all they were doing: defending it. One thing for sure was they weren’t attacking the Coven.

  “Have you seen my father?” she asked Wysochi.

  “No, though I’ve heard that he took his men east.”

  East?

  For a moment Trixie felt hurt . . . betrayed. How could her father have deserted her on tonight of all nights?

  “There’s no ForthRight Army waiting to attack, Sergeant.”

  Wysochi shrugged. “The ForthRight have probably delayed the attack because of the weather. No one wants to advance into the teeth of a blizzard.”

  Trixie nodded. It was a sensible explanation and better than her father’s idea that Heydrich had changed his mind and abandoned the attack on the Coven. Leaders like Heydrich didn’t change their mind; that smacked of weakness.

  “How many men do we have left?” she asked.

  “Maybe a couple of thousand,” Wysochi guessed. “It was hot work.” He cocked an ear back toward St. Petersburg. “And the SS aren’t far behind us.” He was right; even with only one good ear she could hear SS steamers advancing toward them through the chilled silence of the night.

  “Can we force the bridge?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we have any other choice, Colonel. And if we’re going to do it we should do it soon, otherwise we’re going to end up as meat in an SS sandwich.”

  At a signal from Trixie, the remaining WFA fighters attacked the bridge and it was an attack that soon degenerated into mayhem. Later, all sh
e could remember was ordering their steamers to smash through the barricades defending the bridge; the rest was just a blur of firing, fighting, yelling and cursing. The SS detachment stationed on the St. Petersburg end of the bridge had obviously not expected to be attacked from the rear but they fought bravely and the cost of the victory was appalling.

  When Trixie eventually arrived on the Coven side of the bridge, she was flanked by only a tattered and battered rump of the army of seven thousand men and women she’d led over the barricades just two hours before.

  “THE SACRIFICE OF BLOOD?”

  Crowley laughed at her concern. “Oh, don’t fret yourself, Daemon, your life isn’t to be forfeit. I just need a little of your blood to seal the psychic union between you and Lady Aaliz.”

  He gestured to the Witchfinder, who moved forward with an evil-looking knife clasped in his hand.

  “Hold out the Daemon’s forearm,” commanded Crowley.

  “No way!”

  But there were too many of them to resist. They forced her right arm out and the Witchfinder ran the tip of his knife along it, slicing a six-inch cut in her pale flesh. Immediately blood began to run, collected in a gold goblet by an adept.

  Face flushed with excitement, Crowley pointed to a small stage set in the center of the cavern. “Bring the Daemon to the altar,” he boomed, “and, Lady Aaliz, if you would approach through the unformed part of the pentagon, being careful not to step on the rest of the design.” He pointed to the pentagon painted on the floor of the cavern that surrounded the altar, indicating the one missing side. “Now, my Lady,” said Crowley, “if you would please kneel in the direction from which the dawn light will enter our temple.”

  The Lady Aaliz did as she was bade.

  “Have the Daemon kneel facing the Lady Aaliz.”

  None too gently the Witchfinder forced Norma into the pentagon and pushed her down so that she was face-to-face with Aaliz, the girls forming human bookends to the altar. “Ah, the perfect yin and yang,” mused Crowley. “The perfect antipodes: one blond, the other dark.”