The Midnight Guardian (32 page)

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Authors: Sarah Jane Stratford

BOOK: The Midnight Guardian
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“Don't forget, to get to you, they have to go through me.”
Alma nodded and Brigit was pleased to see her shoulders straighten slightly.
She'd been so concerned, she almost hadn't registered what she was smelling, but now she discerned the familiar scent of a sewer, one that could be accessed mere yards from the shipping office. It was a slightly more circuitous route back to the pensione, but she detected another entrance there, quite close. She still recoiled from the idea of taking the children down there, but she knew a mother would do what had to be done.
It meant they could be in the office first thing in the morning.
 
The clerk was shocked to see them at nine. Brigit knew the Spanish had only fleeting beliefs in vampires, which was reasonable, because no vampire would want to linger in such a sunny country. More likely he'd been told she was one of those idle rich who never rose before noon. If she hoped the surprise would win her any favor, however, she was quickly proven wrong.
“You will have to come back this evening,” he insisted. “The authorities will be here then and you can discuss the problem with them.”
Brigit hesitated, then pulled out her calfskin fold. She lay several notes on the desk, her eyes boring into the clerk's.
“I would rather discuss it with you now, and be on the ferry before they arrive.”
He gazed at the money for a full thirty seconds, his mouth slightly open. For good measure, she slipped off her diamond watch and laid it in the center of the pile. His hand inched toward it. Brigit hissed a whisper, urging him on, but whether she was too sapped or his fear of repercussion too great, his hand jerked away as though burned and he spoke to her in a clipped voice.
“It is not possible, under no circumstances. I have strict instructions.”
The money and watch were swept away and the words that slithered into his ear turned his blood cold.
“You may find yourself sorry to have been so subservient.”
He knew a real man would not let her get away with that, would say or do something to remind her of her inherent inferiority, but in fact he'd never felt so terrified, and it wasn't until the door was shut behind the threesome that he was able to breathe again.
“I told you, I told you.” Alma was almost hysterical. They were in the sewer and the dim light and dank surroundings did nothing to assuage the girl's despair. Brigit could hardly blame her. She had no idea what was in store for them, or how they were finally going to get the hell out of this broiling city with its foul air. She was so hungry she was on the verge of losing control, a realization that frightened her more than the meeting they would have to attend that evening.
Eamon! Eamon, help us.
She knew he would feel the call, start the music again. She hated to set him back on such a task, but there didn't seem to be anything else.
“Papa did everything right, it was all right. Why is it going wrong?”
“I don't know.”
“He knew we had to hurry. And we hurried! But it didn't help, did it?”
We ran with violent swiftness and now may lose by over-running.
She only squeezed Alma's hand, wishing it could be some comfort.
“What do you think they're going to do to us?” Alma's voice was soft and trembling.
It was another, colder voice that answered, freezing them to the spot.
“I would worry more about what I am going to do to you.”
Maurer.
It was a mark of how weak Brigit was that she hadn't smelled him. She cursed herself, cursed the stress that made her need more food than should be necessary, cursed the Nazis and every man and woman who bowed and scraped before them, happy to stay alive on their knees, rather than standing up and dying on their feet.
She would not let him see her weakness. He had no weapons with which he could overpower her, that she could tell, but he wielded a gun and she knew he was only too eager to use it. Even worse was that strange, hungry drive of his, that determination that had led him so far off his course, led him even to track them into the sewers. This was not a man swept up in the ardor of orders. This was a man who had struck out his own twisty path, whose unpredictability lent him a danger all his own. Keeping her eyes drilled on Maurer, she handed Lukas to Alma.
“Hold him tight, and stand behind me,” she commanded.
Maurer laughed, a cold, high bark.
“It's far too late for them. And you, too. But I like it, I like that little rat babies trying to escape like rats should die like rats.”
He fired the gun without even taking aim. Alma was too frightened to scream, and it was only Brigit's grunt that told her they were all right, that Brigit had caught the bullet. She pulled it out of her hand and dropped it to the brick floor. Alma hoped Maurer couldn't see how hard Brigit was shaking.
He grinned, seeming pleased with the turn of events.
“You are indeed powerful, just as I knew. What are you doing, wasting all that lovely power on these little roaches?”
“Do set yourself straight, Maurer. Are they rats or roaches? Shall we give you a moment to collect your thoughts, or do you need to go back to indoctrination school?”
He shot again—and again Brigit caught the bullet, but her hands were bubbling with blood and melted lead and hot black residue.
“If I didn't know better,
Brigit
, I would say that you were looking a bit peaked.”
“I'll take your word for it.”
“Perhaps what you need is a bit of sun.”
He seized a chain and jerked it, loosening the slats from a grate above. The fierce morning sun hit Brigit's bleeding hand and she howled and dropped to the floor. Maurer shot again, but Brigit flung herself over the bullet, smashing it underneath her stomach even as she groaned in agony.
“Can't you just leap on him and kill him?” Alma begged in a squeaking whisper.
“I'm weak. I need food.” Brigit grunted, dragging herself to her feet.
“Your devotion to these vermin-spawn is rather touching.” Maurer smirked. “But my superiors won't mind if I bring them back dead.”
“Don't lie, Maurer. We wouldn't have gotten this far if that were true.”
Maurer waved away her comment, intent on his main point. “You, my dear, are worth far more. You and I can still strike a bargain.”
She staggered toward him, eyes on the gun.
“Over my dead body.”
“Think about it, Brigit.” He grinned, jerking loose another slat. The sun scalded her flesh and she screamed, falling back to her knees. Why she had thought this path would be safe, why she hadn't worn gloves, was all beyond her—the joke of her overconfidence. Maurer made to shoot again, but she flung her handbag at his wrist so that the shot caromed off the wall and echoed down the sewer.
“Give it up, Maurer. You must see that this won't end well.”
“Oh, but I think it will. I have right on my side, and that is rather the difference, don't you see? I'm Aryan and human. They're Jews and you're a vampire. All the laws of nature are on my side.”
He squatted so he could look in her eyes and winked. The wink was a loathsome thing. Brigit thought it was not just the poor light that made his eyes look bile-green. There was already something inhuman fermenting inside him. He reeked of envy and resentment for her power and anyone who had ever enjoyed her.
Jealousy is indeed a green-eyed monster.
Brigit held his gaze, marshaling her strength.
“Is it the same bargain you want? The impossible one?”
The burst of hope in his eyes made him look even less human.
“Not impossible. You lied to me. But tell the truth now, and you shall have my protection.”
“From whom?”
He laughed, incredulous.
“This is no times for games, my girl.”
But she sensed something and wriggled herself another inch closer to him.
“Do they know you're here? They don't, do they? You've wandered well off your path.”
“And with what you can give me, I can go back and go further. Much, much further. So, do we have a deal or don't we?”
“But with what you think I could give you, how far could you really go? Wouldn't you be dismissed from your rank? They have a strict non-vampire policy in the SS. I don't think they'd grant an exception for a partial.”
“That's not what I …” But his patience was sapped. He flung his arm out wide and aimed another bullet at the children. The scream that ricocheted through his head was Brigit's, because, although she had leaped on him and forced his wrist up, the bullet had loosened another slat, bringing more sun down upon her bare skin. She rolled him away from the patch of sun, her hands slipping against his flesh. The demon was riding hard inside, a knight coming to help. She twisted the gun out of Maurer's hand and went on twisting until his hand popped off.
“No!” he howled. “The laws of nature …”
“ … are a bit more complex than those of man.” Brigit finished the sentence through glinting fangs.
Maurer squealed, long and low, pushing at her with his bleeding stump, shaking his head in denial.
“No! No, no, no. They're Jews! And you're a vampire! It's all of you who should die, not me. They're Jews! You're a vampire!”
“Right on both counts, but I'd say it was rather a Pyrrhic victory. Tell me, Maurer, will anyone miss you?”
Knowing the answer garnered him no sympathy. Brigit sank her teeth into his neck and drank slowly, savoring the meal, foul-tasting
though it was. Maurer's shrieks resounded through the sewers and it was only when Brigit registered the accompanying shrieks of the children that she clamped her hand over his mouth. She continued sucking him dry, even as she started to sob, hating that the children were seeing and hearing this, but helpless to do anything about it. She had to eat.
When he was empty, she flung his body hard against the wall with a scream, then doubled over, still sobbing, her face buried in blood-soaked hands. Alma's touch startled her. The girl prodded a moistened handkerchief between Brigit's fingers.
“You can't go back to our room looking like that.” Her voice was low but steady.
Brigit suddenly realized she could feel Eamon, feel the music in her. She allowed herself a breath, and was whole again.
I'm all right, my beloved. Thank you. I'm all right.
Alma and Lukas were staring at her with awed eyes. The boy's face was tear-stained and even the rims of Alma's eyes betrayed some telltale pinkness. They were calm, however, and Brigit was grateful. She hauled herself to her feet.
A sudden clatter made them all jump. It was only a slat that had been dangling loose and finally dropped, but it shed more light on Maurer's body. Brigit glared at it. The screams had been loud—nightmares in broad daylight—and it was perhaps a wonder the police hadn't already tracked them down. She seized Maurer's foot and jerked him into semidarkness. But she still wasn't satisfied.
“Brigit?” Alma ventured.
“Walk,” Brigit ordered in response. “Walk. I'll catch up to you.”
As the children trudged down the sewer, Brigit searched Maurer's uniform, stripping him of his identification card. She doused it in blood and shredded it, then dropped it in his wide-open mouth. Then she stomped her foot through his face, sending the card and all his teeth into his stomach. She twisted her toes into each of his fingers on his remaining hand and the one she'd snapped off, feeling the tips disintegrate into powder under her alligator pump. Brigit was far past caring if the authorities determined his death was the work of something supernatural. She simply wanted everyone to have to work that much harder to identify him. Content at last, she rejoined the children.
Safely inside their room, Brigit busied herself with bathing and dressing, taking extra care with her hair and makeup.
“That horrible man, he was nothing, wasn't he?” Alma asked, obsessively brushing her own hair till it shone. “They've got something worse planned for us tonight.”
“Maybe,” Brigit conceded. “But I feel far more equal to it now.”
 
On entering the office again that evening, however, a scant two hours before the ferry was due to set sail, Brigit was uneasy. Maurer had twisted himself far from the party doctrine and into an insular world of his own half-madness, yet he knew her, knew at once who and what she was. And so had others. She supposed it was just the stories, the rumors, the intensity of the Nazi obsession with all things occult and supernatural, the paranoia—this was what had ended up raining hell down upon the millennials. Her pretense still held. It had to. And for this next hurdle, she would just have to play even harder at being human, and trust her talent to get her through yet again.

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