Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)

by J. Bryan

  “Here?” Tommy felt a confused mixture of outrage and excitement. “She’s right here at the base?”

  “Confined in a cell, unfortunately,” Ward said. “I wish she had agreed to come when we asked her, but she didn’t leave us any choice. We are taking good care of her, though, and she has shown some willingness to cooperate with tests. There’s potential there, but we need to bring it out.”

  “Let me talk to her,” Tommy said. “I’ll explain what you’re really doing here.”

  Ward paused for a minute, as if thinking this over carefully. “Do you believe she will listen to you? We don’t want to upset her.”

  “She’ll listen,” Tommy said. “Maybe not right away, but if I can keep visiting her, keep talking to her...She’s not stupid. She’ll come around.” Tommy had no idea whether she would ever agree to work with them, but he was dying to see her again.

  “It might help her along, seeing a familiar face,” Ward mused. “Having someone she trusts to comfort her.”

  “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” Ward turned his attention to his computer screen. “Dismissed.”

  Tommy walked back toward his room, but he slowed as he passed the double doors to the third corridor, where he’d seen the conjugal rooms in his flashes of his previous life. It felt strange to think of himself as an S.S. officer, a Nazi...under Ashleigh's control, yet again. He was beginning to wonder how many lifetimes he’d spent being manipulated by her, even while immune to her actual power.

  He pushed on the doors, and felt mildly surprised when one of them opened. He walked into the third corridor, wondering if all the luxurious furnishings were still here, the old phonographs waiting to play German chamber music.

  He opened the door to the first room. It was empty, stripped down to the bare concrete, with a huddle of cardboard boxes and trash bags in one corner, all the beauty long since carted away by either the Nazis or the Soviets who came after them.

  Tommy crossed the room, his sneakers echoing like heavy boots against the floor. He found the little hole in the wall, which had generally gone unnoticed, lost between the curlicues of a fancy mirror frame. He closed one eye and looked through it, but there was only darkness on the other side.

  He had stood there, he remembered, in the narrow hidden passage that ran along this side of the hall, enabling researchers to observe the conjugal rooms without being noticed. He had stood and watched through the little lens in the wall, and now felt embarrassed at the memory.

  * * *

  Niklaus walked up the narrow, dim hidden passage, long after supper when the base was quiet and nobody was likely to be looking for him. He stopped at one of the tiny, glowing circles in the wall, closed an eye, and looked through.

  The room was empty, of course, the bed curtains tied back, the furniture dusted. Only a single small lamp provided illumination. It had slipped his mind that they’d already moved Sebastian and Mia out of the room. He’d come here out of habit, along with a dim hope that maybe some other couple had been moved onto the hall.

  He’d watched Sebastian and Mia several times over the weeks. At first, it had only been out of curiosity and boredom, a late-night search for entertainment. Watching their bare bodies grind against each other had been far more exhilarating than he’d expected. They fucked with a raw abandon, thanks to Alise’s enchantment. On subsequent nights, now and then, Niklaus found himself sneaking back for another look, and once he’d gone so far as to unzip and pleasure himself while he watched, never mind the scientists who might walk in on him at any moment.

  They were gone now, and he would not get to see Mia squirm in pleasure again, unless they decided to breed her again in another year. Maybe that would be with Niklaus. He’d asked Alise to arrange it for him, but she’d stalled, and now Mia was pregnant by the American instead.

  Niklaus started to turn back, feeling disappointed, until he heard a gasp farther down the hidden passage. He followed it to the last room on the short hall. The walls near the hidden lenses were perforated with pinpoint holes, allowing sound to pass through to observers. He heard the sound again—a high-pitched squeal, then a gasping sound.

  Grinning, he wondered who had been paired up now. Tonight’s visit might not be a complete waste, after all.

  He closed an eye and peered through the lens.

  This room was the nicest of them all, everything trimmed in marble and traces of polished gold. The bed was the largest he’d ever seen, its frame and high poster columns carved from ebony. On the bed, he saw the visiting American banker, Jonathan Barrett, stripped naked and furiously mounting a girl Niklaus couldn’t clearly see, but she was blond. He assumed it was a nurse or typing pool girl the visitor must have picked up. Whoever it was, she shuddered, screamed, snorted, and writhed, shaking and lost in pleasured agony as he took her faster and faster, to the sound of a Wagner overture on the phonograph.

  Niklaus wanted to laugh at the girl’s grunting and howling. The guy was really reaming her hard. He’d never known a woman could make sounds like that.

  Then she turned her head, and he recognized that the squirming girl with her knees locked around Barrett’s hips was his own cousin Alise.

  His smile vanished, and he felt his heart shrivel and turn cold. He felt it like a fist in his gut. He’d been with Alise several times now, even though each time, when he finished, he told himself he would never do it again. The part of him that stewed in guilt and shame kept losing out to the part that still lusted for her—he’d never been able to turn her down when she came to his door.

  It stung to see her with another man, especially lying back spreading herself wide for him, when she’d always insisted that she be on top with Niklaus, never letting him truly take her. Now she gave herself freely to this foreigner, making sounds like he’d never heard. With him, she had always just panted a little, then panted a little faster near the end. With Barrett, she thrashed and cried out like a wild animal.

  He saw, too, that Barrett was substantially thicker and longer then he was, filling Alise far more fully than Niklaus ever could. His cousin seemed enthralled, in a state of ecstasy, looking up at Barrett with droopy lids. She’d certainly never given Niklaus a look like that...a look of surrender.

  He quivered where he stood, opening and closing his fists. He had an urge to charge in there, scream at his cousin, and maybe put his Luger to Barrett’s head and shower his brains all over the wall. No, Niklaus thought. I won’t start with his head.

  Before he could do anything, the door to the conjugal room opened. Gruppenführer Kranzler was there, arms crossed, eyes looking coldly at Alise and the foreign man. Niklaus froze where he was, wondering how Kranzler would react to seeing Barrett on top of his best aide.

  Kranzler just watched for a minute, while Alise and Barrett continued on, faster and louder, wrapped in their own world.

  “It’s a useless effort,” Kranzler finally said, startling the two on the bed. “She’s as barren as a rock in the desert. Trust me.”

  Barrett paused, sweating and catching his breath. He looked from Kranzler to Alise. “Doesn’t feel useless to me,” he finally said.

  Kranzler glared at Alise for another long moment, and Niklaus recognized the expression. Jealousy. So she’d been fucking Kranzler, too. Niklaus wanted to punch his fist through the wall.

  Finally, Kranzler snarled, “You may continue entertaining our guest, Alise.” He slammed the door as he left. Barrett looked down at Alise.

  “Keep going. I’ll show that ugly bastard who’s barren,” Alise hissed.

  Barrett started up again, and Alise soon clenched her eyes and screamed in pleasure again as his oversized cock slid in and out of her.

  Niklaus felt a shining, glittering hate for his cousin Alise, recognizing that she had no real love for him at all. She was only using him. She wanted to get pregnant, and she didn’t seem too picky who the father might be.

  He stalked away down the hidden pa
ssage, the sound of Alise’s high-pitched cries following after him, mocking him.

  Instead of bursting in on them, he paced up and down the male residential corridor. He should be relieved, he told himself. He should never have thought of Alise that way in the first place, never fantasized about her, never given in...She had brought out the worst in him, as she always did.

  Someone else had been on his mind, in every way Alise’s opposite, small, quiet, looking as fragile as Niklaus often felt on the inside. Evelina, the Slavic girl who could speak to the dead.

  The next day, he went down to the cellblock to visit her. He’d been fascinated by her since the day he and Alise had moved her down, maybe because she seemed so innocent and harmless next to Alise. He had strange feelings toward Evelina, and attraction was the smallest part of it. He felt the need to protect her, and to make life a little easier for her.

  He had resisted his feelings while he and Alise were intimate together, but now that he understood Alise didn’t truly care for him, he grew emboldened enough to go and speak to Evelina.

  He knocked on the closed panel in her door, then waited a moment, working up his nerve, before he opened the panel and looked at her through the barred window.

  She sat on her bed, looking back at him and waiting.

  “Hello,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  She glanced around at her concrete cell. “How should I answer that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She watched him expectantly, her eyes dark and vibrant.

  “I brought you...there was Bavarian chocolate on our last supply train,” Niklaus said. “Not much, but S.S. men all got some. I saved a little. Would you like it?” He held up a square of chocolate wrapped in tin foil, offering it through the bars.

  “Why are you giving me that?” She remained on her bunk.

  “Come on. Take it.”

  “Is that an order?” She slowly stood and walked toward him, her eyes full of suspicion. She unwrapped it, revealing the rich chocolate, and her eyes widened. “Is it poisoned?”

  “Why would I poison it?”

  “To kill me?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Am I supposed to trust you?” Evelina asked.

  Niklaus sighed and thought about it. “If you were going to die...wouldn’t it be better to die by chocolate poisoning instead of a firing squad?”

  “This is true.” She looked at the chocolate but made no move to eat it. “Why would you give me this?”

  “I just...feel I should help you,” Niklaus admitted. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Yes. Unlock the door and let me go home.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

  “You can’t? You’re standing outside my door. You’re even wearing an S.S. uniform. I think you could get me out of here if you tried.”

  “They would kill me,” Niklaus said.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll use chocolate.” Evelina gave him a thin smile.

  “Are you going to taste it or not?”

  “What’s the hurry? I have days and days to pass.” She placed it on the wobbly bookshelf that held her clothes, which now consisted only of the cheap, plain gray dresses and slippers the Nazis had issued her.

  “Saving it for later.” He nodded. “That’s smart.”

  Evelina shrugged.

  “Can I bring you anything else?”

  “Besides a key to my door?” Evelina glanced around her cell. “I have nothing to do here. Can you bring me something to read?”

  “What would you like?”

  “Novels, newspapers, magazines, it doesn’t matter! Just anything to keep my mind busy.”

  “I can do that.” He smiled at her, but she didn’t return it.

  “And more chocolate,” she added. “If it isn’t poisoned.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Seth stood over the young man on the table. He was Hispanic, around Seth’s age, a veteran of the Iraq War. His name was Frederico, and his left leg was missing from the knee down. Seth couldn’t stop himself from thinking of the day he’d met Jenny. Everett Lawson had run over Jenny’s dog with his red truck that had the stupid flame decals on the sides. Seth had stopped to heal the dog, and in the process grown back the dog’s leg, which had been missing for months or years. That was how Jenny had discovered Seth’s power, and how Seth had really discovered Jenny. He smiled for a moment at the memory.

  “Can you do it?” General Kilpatrick asked from the window above, looking down on Seth, Frederico, and the researchers and guards within the big concrete lab.

  “I can do it, but I won’t be up for golf afterward,” Seth said. He’d resisted all of Mariella’s attempts to flip him and make him cooperate with Ward, laced with not-very-subtle hints that Seth might be welcomed into Mariella’s bed if he did. Today, though, Ward had played a dirty trick on him.

  ASTRIA had brought in a pool of severely wounded war veterans, amputees and others with injuries that couldn’t be fixed by medical science. One of Ward’s assistants, a thuggish-looking guy named Buchanan, had brought a digital tablet down to Seth’s cell and held it up to the window, showing him all the wounded who’d been brought with the promise of a new, experimental kind of medicine that could fully heal them. The veterans, mostly young men and women his age, were waiting anxiously, their faces showing faint glimmers of hope under masks of grim resignation.

  Seth knew he’d feel guilty if he sent them away without helping, so he’d agree to call a truce with Ward long enough to heal them. It had been a difficult decision for Seth, because he knew that his cooperation was exactly what Ward wanted, but he decided that he couldn’t turn down the chance to help these people. He still wore an orange jumpsuit, and he would still be returned to his cell afterward. It had been interesting to finally leave the cell, though, and see how much the base had changed since last time around. More computers, fewer swastikas, white tile instead of concrete. Some of the guards wore specially designed biohazard armor, complete with air filters and oxygen bottles, to protect them against those with a paranormal touch.

  Now, Frederico looked up at Seth from the stretcher, looking confused.

  “Nobody explained what you’re going to do. It’s not another surgery?” Frederico asked. “I don’t see any equipment.”

  “I can’t really explain it myself,” Seth told him. “Everybody ready?” Without waiting for an answer, he took a deep breath and lay both hands on the young man’s leg stump. He closed his eyes and pushed the healing energy into him to speed things along.

  Seth felt it draining out of him, weakening him. He opened his eyes to see Frederico gaping at the sight of his leg. Long, thin tentacles grew out from his knee. Two of them stiffened like wires, forming the framework of his tibia and fibula, finally meeting to form a sketchy framework, the little bones of Frederico’s new ankle. Others lashed around the bone, forming muscle and tendon.

  Frederico crossed himself and whispered a rapid “Our Father” in Spanish.

  Seth grew weaker and weaker as the bones and muscles thickened and the new foot formed itself from thin air. It wasn’t exactly thin air, Seth knew. All the fat on Seth’s body was already gone, leaving fine details of his own veins and muscles visible under his skin. His muscle tissue was starting to burn away, too, but he held on and kept healing.

  Less than a minute later, the young man’s new leg was complete, and Seth collapsed onto the tiled floor. Two guards hurried over to lift him up.

  “How?” Frederico spoke in an awed whisper, wiggling his toes. The new leg didn’t match the other one perfectly, because the new skin was baby-soft and hairless. Frederico stared at it, his eyes huge. “How is this possible? You didn’t do anything! Are you touched by God?” Frederico gaped at Seth.

  “Urggh, food,” Seth mumbled, half-unconscious. “Take me to food.”

  The guards and a
lab tech helped him into a wheelchair. Seth’s head nodded forward as they rolled away. He heard Frederico’s voice, shouting his thanks again and again, somewhere behind him like a distant echo.

  * * *

  “I want to see Juliana,” Sebastian insisted. “Take me to her, right now!”

  He stood in the hallway of the male dormitory, arms crossed, blocking Niklaus in his room as Niklaus was trying to get out.

  “Move aside,” Niklaus said. “Or do you want me to move you?”

  Sebastian just stared at him, his eyes burning. It had been two days since Alise separated him from Mia, and she hadn’t touched him since. The spell of her power had finally worn off, leaving him furious and worried sick about Juliana, whom he’d hadn’t seen in weeks. He’d been like a drug addict, thinking of nothing but his next dose. Looking back, he could see how Alise had manipulated him, doing her best to make him forget about Juliana, reassuring him that she was doing well whenever he remembered to ask, then dosing him hard so that his mind was full of empty bliss for hours.

  Now he was awake. He was himself again, and he needed to find Juliana. He felt sick for the way he’d spent his time, the power that Alise wielded over him. Her ability had turned out to be far more dangerous than Sebastian had ever expected.

  “Juliana,” Sebastian said. “Now, Niklaus.”

  Niklaus stepped closer, until he was only inches from Sebastian. “Last warning.”

  Sebastian didn’t move. “Now,” he said again.

  Niklaus punched him in the face, sending him staggering back into the hall, drops of blood falling from his nose. Sebastian quickly healed and recovered, and he lunged at Niklaus, hitting him in the stomach. He knew better than to punch anyone in the face, or anywhere there was bare skin, because Sebastian’s fist was accompanied by a burst of healing energy that sort of made his punch pointless.

  Niklaus doubled over with Sebastian’s fist in his solar plexus, but then lunged forward, slamming Sebastian against the far wall of the corridor. Sebastian tried to bring his elbow down on Niklaus’ head, but Niklaus twisted free and then began pummeling him. With each impact, Sebastian felt his courage wane and fear grow inside him. He fought back as best as he could, hitting Niklaus in the chest and stomach and sending him staggering back for a moment, then Niklaus came back with an uppercut to his jaw, filling Sebastian’s head with exploding stars.