Four, p.26
Four, page 26
“Did it work?”
“Oui,” he said with a little grin. “You know, I think she’s the last dame who even remembered my name before you came along. Look, I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty, but let’s just say I was assigned to a unit whose job was to go ahead and meet the local troublemakers and give them encouragement, and sometimes weapons. I was the mouth of the group—go figure—and I had made it through my entire tour of duty without ever having to pull the trigger. It became a running gag in my unit. I had two best friends there, both of them crack shots. Leibowitz was a sniper as a hobby, or so he said. He did most of the shooting for us, and Chandler was a good ole boy from Texas. The medic, Stanley Smith, and I were supposed to keep our hands clean according to them, but I think part of them just liked to do all the dirty work. The four of us all became thick as thieves after a while, even as we got farther and farther into the blasted-out hellhole that took the place of France for a few years in the forties. I would have done anything for those guys . . .”
Stefano started chewing on his lip, his fangs glistening in the moonlight. His eyes had drifted off to some faraway place, while his fingertips tugged and toyed with the edge of one of the towels. Finally Georgia dared to rest her fingers gently on top of his and leaned a little bit closer.
“You seem to remember it so well,” she said.
“When I close my eyes, I still see their faces. It’s like it was yesterday,” he said. “We had been a lot luckier than most guys in the war. We seemed to have an almost unnatural ability to avoid getting caught, until one night we ran into a group of totally spooked refugees from Alsace. I thought they were just shell-shocked. There was a father and daughter. The girl couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and she kept going on and on about the German monster who killed her mother. We asked around and heard rumors of a Nazi death squad that stole women in the night. I mean at that time in France, the Germans were accused of everything short of eating babies, but there was something about these two that seemed different. They had me question them, but they didn’t make any sense. Her father couldn’t remember anything really. He heard his wife scream and then found her dead the next day. The little girl, though, said something about a red demon that drank blood and left her mother drained dry. None of the other guys took her seriously. I didn’t take her seriously.”
He fumbled for the remains of his beverage and groaned as it turned out to be nothing more than crusty remains in the bottom of the tankard. As he looked at the red streaks, the lip quiver returned for a moment before he could continue.
“Our CO had gotten cocky. After all, we were the unit that couldn’t be touched. He wanted to find out what sort of scary freak show the Nazis were running around this village, especially after we found a bunch of desiccated cattle on the edge of town. Leibowitz thought he spotted a group of enemy soldiers holing up in an abandoned brewery just east of town, so even though we didn’t have any hope of backup, we were ordered to check it out.”
“This doesn’t sound like it ended well,” Georgia interjected.
Steve shook his head. “You mean you didn’t see the movie about the brave team of soldiers who single-handedly stamped out a Nazi death squad and ended the war?” he snorted. “He hadn’t made it within half a click of the brewery when the first shots were fired. Leibowitz managed to peg one before he was hit, but the rest of us were mowed down in seconds. The funny thing was, for a death squad, these Nazis were remarkably bad shots. All of us took hits to legs or arms and were clocked upside the head rather than blown to bits.
“So, yeah, I woke up that last place I expected to after an encounter with a death squad—in a bed with a blonde tending to my wounds. This nurse was the prettiest gal I’d ever seen, a prime specimen of the blonde-haired ice princess that exemplified the Aryan ideal. My bullet holes had been sewn up, and I had even gotten a shot of the good stuff, so there was a moment there where I was convinced that I had died and gone to heaven. Then I looked over and saw all of us strapped in the beds in a neat little row—everyone but Leibowitz.
“I heard them talking in the background. It was muffled, but I knew they wanted to examine us, like we were some kind of experiment. A few hours later, I saw them drag in our sniper and dump him in the one empty bed. He looked like death warmed over and was covered in bruises. They took Stanley next—poor bastard. One by one we were dragged into the next room until I was the only one left. We were a recon unit. I had been told the theory of what to do when tortured, but honestly, all the theory in the world means nothing when you’re sweating and bleeding deep inside contested territory. Still, I was so young and stupid that I didn’t know any better. I made up my mind to fight even when it was my turn to be dragged into a tiny little room in the basement. I think it used to be a distillery or something because there were all these pipes and barrels still in there and the whole place smelled like a dive bar.
“I’m dragged in and dumped in a chair. They don’t strap me down. They actually chained me to the floor. All I can see are streaks of blood and god knows what other fluids running from the base of the chair to a door in the back, and there is this tall, pale man in a black trench coat with eyes so blue that they couldn’t be real.
“He starts by testing my German, talking to his friends about the Americans they’ve captured. At first I tried not to show that I knew exactly what he was saying, but when he mentioned cutting off Stanley’s finger, I flinched. He asks me all these questions about who I am and who my parents are, but I only respond with various versions of fuck you. Finally, he has these two goons give me a solid once-over. Never let it be said that the Germans don’t know how to throw a punch.
“I dunno, I just got into this stubborn mode, where I found it easier not to talk, no matter how persuasive my interrogators became. I knew I was dead meat, so I wanted them to really have to put in some real effort before I was done. After a while I was dragged back to my bed, and once more it was the sweet little princess and her painkillers. This went around and around for a good day or two with no food and only a bit of water to keep me from dying. I heard some cries and screams for the first few hours, then . . . nothing. I figured everyone else had been taken care of, so when they grabbed me again, I just said a little prayer and hoped there would be enough to send something home to my mama.”
“But you didn’t die,” Georgia started. “Well, I mean you didn’t stay dead.”
“This time when I went in the room, there was another soldier, a much more petite one, who was practically bursting out of her SS uniform. She was like the pinup girl for Adolf’s Angels—a spitfire with flaming red hair and lipstick to match. I remember seeing my reflection in her thigh-high boots. I’d never seen leather polished so well. But as cute as she was, something in the pit of my stomach told me to run, to fight to do anything in my power to get out of that room. I knew, somehow, that I was in greater danger than I had ever been before in my life.”
“Claudia,” Georgia whispered.
Steve nodded again. “Claudia von Jaeger had worked her way into the regime. She agreed with their ideals of racial purity and loved having a job where no one seemed to be disturbed by her habit of torturing and killing. She had staffed her team with commoners from across the Third Reich and formed a tight-knit vampire crew to do all manner of wet work for the Nazis.”
“Nazi vampires?”
“Oh, you knew they had to be there. Every war has been a good time for our kind. You can get away with so much on the battlefield that can simply be explained away as soldier’s trauma, and with so many people dying, who is really going to notice a little missing blood? The problem with this war was that it was spreading from your kind into ours, and several of the families weren’t too keen on the Jaegers so openly siding with a human power. It had been nearly a millennium since vampires had tried to go legit and join with a human government, and you can ask Gingersnaps how well that turned out for his grandpa. Claudia may be stubborn, but she’s not stupid, and she could already see where the wind was blowing once the boats landed in Normandy.”
“Vampires fought in World War II,” Georgia said incredulously.
“To be fair, millions of humans fought in World War II, while only a handful of vampires joined in openly. This was nearing the end of 1944, and Lorcan Darcy and his whole family were getting dangerously close to signing a treaty with the Jiangshi and the Azarola to petition to have the entire Jaeger clan exiled, just like the Lungs. No matter how powerful the Jaeger might be, no sane clan would want to be pinched between all the progressive families and the Lung.”
“No, that doesn’t sound good at all,” Georgia said.
“But I didn’t know this. I just knew that there was this terrifying creature in the room—something completely inhuman but dressed up like one. She knew I was afraid too. She kept circling me like a vulture until I dared to blink. Next thing I knew, she was in my lap with my wrist in her mouth. I remember crying out, as I could actually feel her sucking the life out of me, but it was only for a second. I blinked again, and she was across the room whispering to the scary man in the coat. All I can remember is them arguing over and over again if I would work, if I would be enough of a symbol.
“You see, I was a good old American boy with—gasp—Jewish roots. What could be a better symbol to show that the Jaegers could change their ways than by welcoming a US mongrel into their ranks and scoffing entirely at the führer’s ideals?
“We thought we were hunting them all those weeks in France, but as it turns out, the Jaegers were the ones stalking us. She whispered my name. She knew my favorite color, my brand of cigarettes, and even the name of my first girl—Jeanette. I thought they were going to ask me for troop movements or codes, but instead she asked if I’d ever killed a man. I finally admitted that to her. I was a pretty piss-poor soldier. I mean, my job was translating and getting us cognac half the time. I’d never taken anything I’d done too seriously until then. It was always the other guy’s turn to be the hero, that is, until that night—” He stopped again to fidget.
“Go on,” Georgia said.
“They dumped us in the basement, all of us pretty beaten and broken. Claudia paced in front of us all, taunting that we were all dead men and that we just didn’t know it. She said she had one offer, if there was anyone with the balls to take it. The offer was simple: if one of us would volunteer to be tortured to death, then she would not kill the others. Of course this was in German, so I was the only one who understood it perfectly. The others got bits and pieces, but I heard it loud and clear. For once in my life, I was going to be the hero, so I raised my hand.
“‘A promise is a promise,’ she swore to me,” Steve snorted. “I let her drag me into that little room, while the rest of the boys were taken upstairs to recover. I think you can guess what the manner of my death was.”
“You gave your life up for your friends?” Georgia asked.
The vampire closed his eyes. “Claudia kept her promise, yes, but Steve DeMarco had to die that day. I could never go back home and ended up spending time in England and then America with Geoffrey to try and improve relations. My whole existence is nothing more than one big PR stunt, you see. I had to wait until all my war buddies were long gone before I could come back to the East Coast.”
“And you don’t tell the truth now, why?” Georgia asked.
“The Jaegers are an old-school family, a conservative family. To them what happens after you die is the important part. Being human should have nothing to do with what you are. To admit that they chose a human to appease the progressives is nothing more than an admission of defeat in some vampires’ eyes. I’m just a necessary evil, and the further I get away from that truth, the happier my family will be. Don’t you see? The fact that I even remember my old life makes me a lesser being in their estimation. Most vampires can only barely recall being human. It’s just like a daydream or some hazy early-childhood memory.”
“That sounded pretty clear to me,” Georgia said.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Steve asked. “Vampires exude poisons that make your head fuzzy. They make you forget. No one remembers getting turned into a vampire because the whole process should be too traumatic and they should be too drugged-up from the miasma to know what is happening, but every once in a while, there are special people, people who don’t seem to be affected at all by mist—”
“You mean—?” Georgia asked.
“Yes, Georgia, I was just like you.”
12
“What does that even mean?” Georgia asked as she lounged back on the sofa. Gail’s eyes had grown into adorable little saucers, while the blonde vampire shook her head dismissively.
“It means that mein bruder is zee dramatic one in zee family,” Minerva snorted. “It also means that he is a freak, like our lovely little Berliner here.”
“It also puts a pretty big hole in the theory that we humans are nothing more than mindless suits you wear,” Georgia snapped.
Minerva burst out laughing. “Oh, yah, yah, wee little Steffan proves all the Pendragons and their soft-sap ilk to be right and zee evil Nazi-leiben to be wrong,” she said. “And there are freaky little ones of your kind that say they remember being Napoleon or Cleopatra. Those that choose to believe them, do, those that are sane do not. As a newborn, little Steffan vas obsessed with his human shell. He has quite zee imagination too.”
“Oh of course, you would never believe him, would you, Minerva? You just sprang forth as a walking, talking, blow job-obsessed little princess, didn’t you?” Georgia snapped.
“If you listened to one of our sane scientists, Dr. Schreiber perhaps, then you would know that this so-called human soul is no more than a set of chemicals imprinted on now unused tissues. It’s no more than watching one of your videocassettes—” the vampire started.
“First off, the videocassette was a thing when I was in elementary school. Please, get with the century. Second, you’re interrupting my interview, so if you wouldn’t mind—?”
“Interview?” Minerva laughed. “Just get to zee good parts. I want to hear how mein bruder got in those wee wittle höschen of yours.”
The other human furrowed her brow and cocked her head a little as she pondered exactly what the vampire had claimed. “Wait, if you’re saying that there are still memories present in the brains of the humans you inhabit and you can recall them, doesn’t that just make them your memories?” Gail finally asked.
“Hah! Does watching Enter the Dragon make you the heir to the Shaolin Temple?” Minerva snorted.
“Huh?” Gail asked.
This time Georgia stepped back into the ring. “Don’t mind Minerva. She only watches kung fu flicks and porn, so her use of pop culture analogies is a little stunted,” she sighed.
“That is because they are zee only films worth watching,” Minerva said.
“Yes, I’m fairly certain that the whole trend of all vampires knowing martial arts was completely started by her,” Georgia added. “The one time she came to movie night . . . wow, let’s just say I learned how to disembowel a man using one finger and chop off a head with a hat.”
“Oh, can I show her?” Minerva said, suddenly even giddier. “Bitte!”
“I guess it’s time for party tricks of the undead,” Georgia said before flagging over the waiter and asking, “Do you have anything wooden that you aren’t too attached to back there?”
The waiter smiled slyly for a minute but refrained from any comment. He nodded and slipped off to the kitchen, while the blonde vampire continued to bounce in her seat. “Minerva is like the rest of her family, a lightweight after a bit of the drink,” Georgia warned. “Do me a favor, sweetie, and grab that pillow and hold it to your chest.”
Gail dutifully grabbed a cushion before the waiter came back with an empty fruit box tucked in a thick plastic bag. “For the lady,” he said before setting it between the girls. Minerva eyed it carefully and took time to check that the plastic was wrapped completely around before daring to pick it up.
“Now you put this over zee pillow and hold it really tight, little one,” Minerva said as she kicked off her heels and started dancing back and forth on the balls of her feet, Bruce Lee-style.
“OK,” Gail said and stood up and gripped the box around the cushion. The vampire continued to dance and stared intently at her target before taking a deep breath and moving to less than an inch from the smaller, frailer human. Gail gulped as she was once more face-to-face with the stone-cold face of a vampire.
Suddenly Gail lurched as the box shattered, and she could feel an impact in the depths of her gut. Minerva remained in place, but Gail fell back and was only saved from a full topple by the waiting arms of Georgia Sutherland.
“Is that some vampire power?” Gail gasped as she dropped the bagful of shrapnel to the floor.
“It took me nearly twenty years, but I finally mastered a one-inch punch!” Minerva said. “Isn’t it awesome? I love to show it off!”
“That’s not all you like to show off, Minnie,” Georgia cracked as the vampire shimmied her dress back down her thighs. “You know, one day you aren’t going to know your own strength, and you’ll end up with wood poisoning again.”
Minerva blew Georgia a kiss. “I knew you cared about me, Berliner.”
“It’s not that I care about you, it’s that I care about not having to deal with a sheriff’s inquiry on a Friday night. It would be very messy to take care of a vampire body here, wouldn’t it?” Georgia said as she kicked the remains of the crate under her seat. “Are you done with your little display, Buffy?”
Gail continued to furrow her brow. “That was really dangerous, wasn’t it?” she finally asked.
“Oh, what is life without a little risk, shatzi?” Minerva said while pinching Miss Filipovic’s cheek. “A wee bit of danger stimulates the blood, yah?”
