The Midnight Guardian (13 page)

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Authors: Sarah Jane Stratford

BOOK: The Midnight Guardian
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Brigit gripped his head and forced it to nod. With one last grin, she sank her teeth into him, loving the gasps of anguish, loving the feel of his body jerking in hopeless desperation. She sucked slowly, wanting to draw out the pain, but it had been a long time since she'd killed a man using pure fear, and she'd forgotten you needed a taste for it. And as for the taste of him, well, it was perhaps the worst yet of all the food they'd been eating. His callousness, arrogance, superiority. All that, spicing the fear and the fury, scorched her esophagus. She choked and his blood spurted out through her nose and down his back. She pulled away, sputtering. If Eamon could see this, he would be rolling on the ground with laughter. The watchman slumped against the wall, not dead yet, and coherent enough to look at her with a bleary eye and smile.
“Choking on me, vampire? Good.” And he laughed weakly.
Brigit wiped the blood off her mouth, now set in a hard, thin line. She seized the watchman by the cheekbones and jerked him up to face her.
“Challenge me, will you? Mock? This, this is nothing. I promise you, what I have inside me is far more frightening and destructive than anything stewing in your soul. Mine is the never-ending nightmare, or don't you know?”
Even as she said it, she wondered fl eetingly if it was true. Something in his eyes told her he wasn't so sure, either, and it made her eyes blaze harder. She dug her fingers more deeply into his cheekbones, feeling them splinter under the pressure.
“Don't you know I could feed off you for a month, if I wanted?”
He managed a shrug, not dropping his eyes from hers.
Well. Courage. I certainly didn't taste that before.
However, she wanted him to know, to understand, the way she wanted all of them to know what sort of fate they might be bumping up against, the longer they stayed on this path. He was sputtering, and she could see him working up enough saliva and blood to spit in her face. She pinched his lips so that they poked out like a duck's bill.
“Didn't your mother ever teach you to have respect for the dead?”
With that, she snapped her fangs through his lips, silencing him. The pain and the heat from her eyes made his own water. She summoned more of the demon from under her flesh—an inch-long talon extended from her index finger. She poked it into him, just above his nipple, and slowly ran it down, down, down, into his inner thigh. Her red eyes burned into his agonized ones.
She pulled away from him, ripping open his lips. Using just her forefinger and thumb, she neatly broke his jaw. He was past screaming now, and clawing desperately for the relief of death. His hand clutched at her coat in a silent plea. She leaned into his ear again for one last whisper.
“Yes, I could keep you alive, conscious, in this much pain, for a month. And I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it, you can be sure.” She paused, letting the words sink in. “But I won't. Because unlike humans, we don't inflict pain for fun.”
The gratitude came rushing into his eyes and she nodded, satisfied.
The rest of him went down much more smoothly.
 
Czechoslovakia went down without a whimper, German Jews were stripped of yet more rights, and a ship full of refugees was turned away from the States and sent back to Europe. There was nothing in the news to rally the vampires. General von Kassell's arrival was delayed, only adding to the exasperation. At last, however, he was on his way, and they were
ready for him. The event was to take place on June 21, which amused Mors.
“Delightful. A midsummer night's nightmare.”
Von Kassell was arriving in one of the Führer's personal trains. A woman Cleland kept entertained gave him some details of the treasure the general was bringing—cash and valuables that Bavarian Jews were no longer allowed to keep. She could hardly comprehend how they'd done so well for themselves in the first place. The stacks of confiscated marks were loaded into the train's armored cars, to be sent on to safety in Switzerland, but the jewels and objets would be fairly distributed, unless that Magda Goebbels bitch and Eva Braun creature claimed more than their share.
“There's more.” Meaghan smiled. The other four stared at her. “He's bringing approved culture. One textbook factory has provided all the history books for Berlin students for the next two years, the local Department of Education has spent a great deal of money on the venture. And the art, well, simply thousands was sunk into the commission of this art, all to hang in the great halls of power, and schools. Portraits of the man himself, much of it, him, and so many of those around him. So that no one will ever forget the faces of these architects.” She stole a sly glance at Brigit. “Or anyway, that's what my man at the Chamber says.”
Swefred kissed her and the other three looked away, but they were openly impressed. The train and all in it were a veritable Tutankhamen's tomb. It was ripe for the plunder.
 
General von Kassell and his twelve guards were early. Most of the expected guests were at a tour of a new school and would not arrive for another hour at least. The small group of SS officers and lesser men assigned to this evening's proceedings were nervous and apologetic, but the general brushed off their concerns, cheerfully untroubled, and said he was quite happy to sit by a nice fire and wait. He did not care for long train journeys.
The lieutenant in charge privately congratulated himself on having lit a fire in the auditorium's opulent antechamber and laid in some extra bottles of schnapps. He'd hoped to purloin them later, but no matter, compliments on his organization would make for a better reward.
The antechamber was an awkward room, oversized, with high
ceilings and heavy velvet drapes that collected too much dust. The general seemed pleased, nonetheless, and busied himself lighting a pipe.
“
Guten Tag
, General,” murmured a sweet voice behind him, so that he and his guards started violently.
No one had seen the scrumptious golden-haired girl enter, but there she was, standing by an armchair, her smile an open invitation.
“Pleasant journey, one hopes?” The strawberry-blonde with the enormous green eyes might have sprung up from the antique Persian carpet, but the general was hardly interested in asking questions. He was impressed that these German peasants were so thoughtful and had such very fine taste. The girls were exquisite. They must be Prussian.
The honor guard hovered hopefully, not expecting the general to share, but wanting to be at the ready, just on the chance. Von Kassell noted the looks the girls were giving him, the way they were assessing his figure. He was over sixty, true, but still handsome, and powerful. A warrior to the very core.
“Is this your first trip to Berlin, General?” the blonde queried.
“No, I came to Berlin as a boy,” he answered, his tone both jocular and rueful. “It was very different. A warmer place, full of life.”
“I agree,” Mors put in, astonishing the group. They hadn't heard the door open, but three strange men, wearing swords, leaned against the wall. Von Kassell glanced past Mors to the short corridor leading toward the auditorium. The scent of the suddenly too-silent space made his neck prickle, the way it always had in the heat of battle. Mors was smiling at him, and for a brief moment, von Kassell thought he recognized him, or perhaps it was just that he knew a fellow soldier when he met one.
“If you don't like what Berlin has become, why are you here to help it down this new path?” The tone was polite, but the disgust and malice unmistakable.
Von Kassell only stared, and Brigit suspected he had no answer, or none that he wanted to speak out loud. The Prussians had always felt themselves above the Germans, and having first to give up their own kingdom, and now come round to this new Reich, so much more powerful than theirs had ever been, was shameful. Undoubtedly, von Kassell had some plan to join with Hitler so as to build up the Prussian kingdom again. Mors looked at him with a kind of amused pity.
The guards had drawn their weapons and were only waiting for the general to order them to fire. Brigit and Meaghan each smiled at two men and ran their hands over the close-cropped hair. The other eight guards and the general stood in frozen horror as the vampires neatly twisted the heads, popping them off the bodies and tossing them into the fire.
As the cacophony of yells rose, Mors, Cleland, and Swefred each gave easy, almost careless swings of their swords. Eight heads toppled to the carpet, rolling about like marbles before being squashed by falling bodies. Mors smiled at von Kassell.
“You should be pleased, General. You are to set a good example of what will befall everyone in Berlin if they carry on down this path. You seem like the sort of man who likes to set examples.”
Mors stepped closer and von Kassell brandished his own sword with a practiced grace. Mors smiled, and even Brigit did not see how, seconds later, the general's sword was in Mors's other hand. Mors's arms seemed hardly to move, and yet von Kassell's body lay in the center of the room, the head and limbs severed, veins protruding so as to more thoroughly saturate the carpet with blood.
Brigit found the hook that opened the skylight and the five vampires leaped up through it. Only Mors knew the trick of closing it so that it would lock from the inside. They lurked near the auditorium's entrance, watching the guests approach, biding their time for maximum impact.
They had carefully calculated this next step, wanting the terror to build. The first men entered and slid to the floor on the reams of spilled blood, snatching at hands that came loose on contact. The hardier ones ran through the auditorium, useless guns in hand, calling, until they found the antechamber. They yelled for those who weren't vomiting to hunt the assassins, who could not have gotten far. The vampires were counting on a few among them to keep their heads and run for the train, knowing it must also be a target.
Mors could have managed the Nazis and the general on his own, but the other four were determined to be in on the fun. The mission was a group effort, after all, and too little real progress had been made not to want to team up now for such a brilliant show of chaos. Besides, it was cleaner and quieter this way, all the better for what they were about to do.
The train was ringed with guards whose ears were just pricking at
the sounds of cries from the nearby auditorium. Each man felt a rush of cold air and had a millisecond to see the volcano of blood spurt from his neighbor before he, too, was slashed to ribbons by the knifelike claws of a sprinting vampire.
The men who came running from the bloody scene at the auditorium saw only the bodies. They paused, hearing a rumble, a whine, and then stared, dumbfounded, as the train exploded.
The fireball sprang into the air like sunrise. The shouts of fear and dismay, as well as the sound of falling debris piercing flesh and setting buildings afire, were pure nectar to the vampires. They held back their laughter as everyone screamed that the saboteurs must be near, there was no way they could escape, and yet no one thought to look up. Mors gave the signal and the vampires scampered away, skipping lightly over building rooftops like gazelles, all the way back to the lair, enjoying the singed air and its ripe promise of a hot summer's journey home.
 
“It was too inhuman.”
There was rueful congratulation in Cleland's tone, because no one wanted to make Mors feel worse than he plainly did. They had never seen him cowed, and it was more terrifying than the realization of their new problem. The cleanliness of the assassinations, the perfect destruction of the train, and the total lack of any clues had led many in the party to whisper that there was something evil among them. It seemed someone had consulted a legend book and found that a few other enemies of Britain had been killed in the manner von Kassell had, and the legends all were sure it was the work of Mors. It was only Mors's brilliant acting, combined with the poor renderings of his face in the German legend books, that kept anyone from realizing who Major Werner really was, but Mors was still compromised.
“It wasn't just the assassination, it was all of it. We did it too well. That's why it's not in the papers.” Swefred was gently encouraging. And it was true. When Brigit asked Gerhard about the meeting with von Kassell, because she'd known for weeks that his superiors were going, he turned white and told her something had gone amiss, but she wasn't to worry. Meaghan reported that the Chamber of Culture was devastated, and the Berlin Department of Education frantic, but with so
many events planned for autumn, it would be well not to stir any doubt in the general public.
“So the plans are still going ahead,” Mors remarked with a bitter smile. “I wonder what role they're expecting my major to play in this little war game of theirs? Ought I be worried they haven't told me?”
Brigit lay a hand over his, running her thumb gently over his wrist. She wanted to enjoy their success more, but three weeks later, it was as though it hadn't happened, and the only result was that they all had to be more circumspect than ever, lest the new wonderings brewing in some minds went wandering to close quarters. But Mors was still a fond member of his group of Nazis, they did not seem to suspect him, and the others reported no change in their circles. As for Gerhard, he was very much the same, and Brigit knew he was no actor, so it must be genuine. That was useful, but the fact that the vampires had shown such force, had taken such a stand, and ultimately achieved so little—that stung.

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