Beyond the Veil (Demon Squad Book 5)
Page 19
He followed through and tugged my arm over my head, pulling my body in its wake. I landed once more on my back, my limp and shattered arm dropping lifeless at my side to join its broken and useless companion. Spasms wracked my chest and crimson spewed from my mouth as I rolled to my side. The world swam before my eyes, and I fought the encroaching unconsciousness. If I went out, I was dead.
“You were right to try to kill me, for I intend you no less,” he told me, confirming my thoughts. He circled as I fought to get to my knees. I could feel the weight of his undead stare. “This is a freedom I would never know, in your land or any other.” The vampire roared into the darkness, his fists pounding against the necrotic flesh of his chest. “Tell me, assassin, would your people offer safe passage to me and my family, an escape from the war and the color of my skin? Would the Americans?”
Despite the wish of hopeful thoughts, I didn’t think they would. I got to my feet as he moved behind me, my legs trembling as they challenged gravity. The glimmer of daylight through the warehouse door beckoned, but the vampire was too close. I’d never make it; not without help. I heard the distant thunder of war, death once more raining down over Tobruk as Rommel announced his presence.
I turned to face the vampire, meeting his dark eyes. “It’s a shame your sons won’t live to see what you’ve become. Hitler might well have promised their safety, but the allies have made no such deal.”
Eyeteeth flickered in the dim light of the warehouse as the vampire loosed his rage. Twin palm prints burned at my chest as he shoved me. My ribs shattered. Their sharp points speared my lungs and perhaps my heart, but I couldn’t tell in the wash of searing agony.
The wind whipped past as I flew into the warehouse wall. I heard the impact of flesh against wood and then a splintered screech as the timbers gave way. Brightness filled my eyes. I tumbled through the air only to have the light stolen away when I struck the ground. Somewhere in the chaotic swirl of my mind, I felt the earth cradling me with her unforgiving solidness. The taste of dust joined that of blood, each labored breath bubbling with the end of my life. My gambit had succeeded and failed, all at the same time.
I twitched against the hard ground, unable to rise, but I could feel the muted rays of the sun returning to shower me in their light. I’d made it outside, but at what cost? My chest rumbled with every cloying breath, and I could feel the creep of cold, which tingled down my limbs.
He’d killed me.
The thought was a shroud that buried my resistance. I quit my struggle and gave in, letting my head rest against the dirt. The bombs drew ever closer, the world rumbling beneath me as they fell to ground. The Germans were coming, and I’d failed. I cracked my eyelids to watch the last moments of the fading sun, only to have the light suddenly blocked.
The vampire stood before me. His smile had returned.
In his cold shadow, I wondered if I were not already dead. “I-I—“ The fragments of my question ran wet down my chin.
“It’s wunderbar, is it not?” Once more he hovered over me. The sun struggled to sneak past his darkness, sparing only a sliver of its brilliance to warm me. “Hitler promised me Herr Mengele could make me a god.” He stood to his full height and obscured the light, his arms stretched to his sides as he stared off at the sky. Thunder roared in the distance. His voice rang out, matching its vehemence. “I am the true herrenvolk, not these pale skinned sacks of meat who lord their blue eyes over my family. When this war is done, they will know my wrath.” A sinuous chuckle slipped loose as he dropped his gaze to mine. “But now, it is you who must die.”
I tried to rise, to fight back, but my strength had gone. My resistance was little more than a gurgled complaint as the vampire reached for my throat. I closed my eyes and cast a prayer to the heavens.
“Leave him alone.”
Spoken in Arabic, the words were so fragile, so delicate, that I doubted I’d even heard them. If I hadn’t still suffered the pain of my wounds, I would have believed them imagined, a figment of my dying mind. But the vampire had heard them, too. He straightened and glanced over his shoulder. My gaze followed on the tail of his.
Near the shattered warehouse wall stood a boy. He was no more than eight years-old. Darker of skin than even the vampire, he almost faded into the shadows of the building.
“Go away, child,” the vampire said, reverting to German, though I doubted the boy understood.
Little more than an emaciated skeleton, he stood his ground. Shirtless, I could count his ribs, his chest puffed out almost unnaturally with his challenge. His dark eyes held the vampire’s gaze without fear—or more likely with ignorance. He couldn’t have known what the man standing over me was, but to the boy, it didn’t seem to matter.
“Please, mein kind, go…leave us.” The vampire returned to broken English, his voice almost pleading.
The boy continued to ignore him whether he understood or not. In his hand he held a slim branch, its knots and skin scraped away to smooth its length. He raised it up and pointed it at the vampire. The boy said nothing, but even as broken as I was, I could sense the threat in his posture.
“No, child, go…please,” I begged. Moments from death, I didn’t want his blood on my hands.
The vampire grunted and turned toward the boy, a sneer peeling his lips back. He took a threatening step forward, showing his eyeteeth. He’d had enough. “Last chance to flee,” he warned.
The boy extended his stick. His eyes narrowed as a glimmer of red appeared at the point of the branch. The vampire froze at the sight of it. I stared at the dot, blinking to see if it went away, a figment of my damaged mind, but the flicker seemed to grow larger by the moment. The subtle tang of burnt wood wafted over as the child advanced on the vampire. The boy grinned, his face taking on a maniacal expression as he wielded the stick like a gun.
Then it went off.
A brilliant flash of ruby stole my sight. I felt a sudden loss of pressure, my ruined lungs emptied of breath, and then the air was back. It hit me like cannon fire. I was yanked off the ground and tossed about. My body was peppered with debris, and what bones had still been whole, crackled and broke apart beneath the hurricane force. A rotten sickness welled inside, the world spinning into a blur. I tasted the rubbery foulness of dead meat and smelled the putrid stench of old death. Then the winds were gone.
I fell like a stone, dropping to the dirt, a broken sack of grain, limp and weak. Gratefully numb, I barely noticed. I gasped to draw a breath. My lungs resisted the air, and I wondered if this was how it felt to die.
Unable to explain what happened, I cracked my eyes and saw the young boy standing over me. A crooked smile twisted his lips. He was unhurt. I hurriedly looked about, but I could see nothing beyond the wreckage of the warehouse and a body charred beyond all recognition. It appeared as though a bomb had struck it dead center. The vampire was gone.
“Are you well?”
My gaze went back to the boy when he spoke. He held a small, calloused hand out to me. I resisted a moment, expecting the darkness to whisk me away, but I remained; just me and the boy. I thought him an angel. No air circled through my lungs, the thump of my heart still in my chest, yet there he stood. I could hear none of the distant bombs or the shouts of dying men. There was no more pain. This could only be death.
He waggled his fingers in my face, calling me up. “Come, Katon, he is waiting.”
My name sounded in my ears. The boy knew me. It was the proof I’d dreaded. I was dead.
The realization hit home like a raindrop in the ocean. I expected to be sad, to break down and cry, but there was nothing. No tears clouded my eyes, and no sorrow weighed upon my silent heart. There was simply nothing.
“Come,” he repeated, an impatient wiggle shaking his hand.
I gave in to the phantom child and reached out. A blackened hand grasped his in place of mine. My vision wavered at the sight, but yet I could feel his thin fingers against my palm. I followed the strange arm down its length, spying th
e ebony shoulder that sat beside my head. Another dark hand kneaded the leathern flesh there. It stopped at my behest. The sense of it made my head spin.
“What—?“
My panicked question was interrupted by a gentle voice beside me. “I’ll explain everything, but we must go, Katon. We have little time before the Germans resume their shelling.”
I looked past the dark flesh of the strange shoulder to see a young Mexican man. His hair was full and dark and wild above the thick glasses he wore. Bright green eyes appraised me through the lenses. Wiry beneath his nondescript outfit, he slipped his hand under the dark arm and lifted. I rose along with it, feeling a strange sense of dislocation.
“Lead the way, Rahim,” the man said.
The boy nodded and jogged off. I was tugged along behind. My feet were leaden and stepped out of time, but I feared looking down at them. Shadows flickered in my peripheral vision as I let the man cart me off.
“It will all be clear soon,” he said. “I promise.”
About Tim
Tim Marquitz is the author of the Demon Squad series, the Blood War Trilogy, co-author of the Dead West series, as well as several standalone books, and numerous anthology appearances including Triumph Over Tragedy, Corrupts Absolutely?, That Hoodoo Voodoo that You Do, Widowmakers, At Hell’s Gates 1&3, Neverland's Library, Blackguards, and the forthcoming SNAFU Survival of the Fittest, SNAFU: Hunters, SNAFU: Black Ops (Cohesion Press), In the Shadow of the Towers (Night Shade), and Unbound (Grim Oak Press). Tim also collaborated on Memoirs of a MACHINE, the story of MMA pioneer John Machine Lober.
Tim is co-owner and Editor in Chief of Ragnarok Publications.
www.tmarquitz.com
Follow Tim on Facebook and Twitter.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Bonus Short Story