Lady Lazarus Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Lady Lazarus

  “Intriguing, beautiful, and impossible to put down.” —Meljean Brook, USA Today bestselling author of The Guardians series

  “Lyrical, haunting, and full of a dark, sublime beauty, Lady Lazarus is simply stunning.” —Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author of Blaze of Memory

  “Michele Lang’s Lady Lazarus is a beautifully written tale set in a complex, alternate Nazi Europe. The characters are dark and well developed, and the author is a talented storyteller.” —Faith Hunter, author of the Rogue Mage series

  “Lady Lazarus is brilliantly original and delicious to read. It’s the sort of book that keeps you up all night and leaves you wanting more.” —Diana Pharaoh Francis, author of Bitter Night

  “A fascinating story and concept—a daughter of the Lazarus bloodline capable of rising from the dead. Filled with adventure, imbued with history, and beautifully told. Wish I had thought of it.” —Sunny, bestselling author of Lucinda, Dangerously

  Lady Lazarus

  Michele Lang

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LADY LAZARUS

  Copyright © 2010 by Michele Lang

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by James Frenkel

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-2317-0

  First Edition: September 2010

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Lady Lazarus by Michele Lang Book Club Questions

  About the Author

  In loving memory of my grandmother, Irene Weber

  “Did we not throw three men, bound, into the midst of the fire?” They answered and said unto the King, “ ‘Surely, O King.’ He answered and said, ‘Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like an angel.’ ”

  —Daniel 3:24–25

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful for the advice and encouragement of Juliet Blackett, Amy Lau, Bianca D’Arc, Chris Keeslar, Monika Lahiri, Michelle Rowen, Jackie Kessler, Charlene Teglia, Jill Myles, Megan Crane, and many more friends and readers who encouraged me along the way. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for all historical inaccuracies and unintentional blasphemies.

  My deepest gratitude to my grandparents, those who survived the Holocaust and those who didn’t. Love and thanks to my mother and father, Judith and Michael Lang, who survived the unspeakable and gave me life. Thank you to my brother, Henry, and to my sister-in-law, Lana, who encouraged me, supported me, and dared me to write this book.

  My love and thanks to my mother- and father-in-law, Gerald and Seena Palter, for their beautiful outlook on life, their unwavering love and support, and their superb grandchild-watching skills.

  I have been very fortunate for the help and skill of my wonderful agent, Lucienne Diver, who believed in me and this book and never gave up on either of us. She found the perfect editor for this book, James Frenkel—many thanks for being this book’s champion. Thanks also to my sharp-eyed copyeditor, Christina MacDonald, who caught and corrected various factual and continuity errors.

  Last and foremost, my husband, Steven Palter, has endured my obsession with Magda Lazarus and her many incarnations since at least 1994, and he has been a loving husband, a discerning, careful first reader, and a constant inspiration. For this and for so much more, I am grateful beyond my ability to express. To you, and to our sons, Joshua, Gabriel, and Sam—together, you are my greatest teachers. Thank you for everything.

  Lady Lazarus

  Prologue

  JULY 1945 PARIS

  I damned my soul in the summer of 1939. I did it for the noblest reasons, the best ones—to save the people I loved; to make a terrible wrong turn right. But still I am tormented by the thought that my sins overwhelmed my intentions and turned my noble sacrifices to dust even as I made them. Only time will tell if my desperate measures, in the end, were justified.

  In my mind, that final summer is saturated with golden sunlight. My beloved home—gilded Budapest, the Paris on the Danube—glittered brilliantly in the sun, even blighted as it was by the stain of fascism. The cafés still buzzed with energy, the city still throbbed at night. My Budapest still lived.

  And I felt at home there like no other place I have lived before or since. To me, a girl of only twenty, Budapest was the culmination of a life’s dream of freedom. My family, originally from the northern mountain town of Tokaj, was drawn to Budapest’s brilliant light at the end of the nineteenth century, and my father, a wine trader, eventually made his fortune.

  Not even the depredations of Béla Kun’s Bolshevik regime in 1919, followed by the genial fascist toad, that hypocrite Regent Horthy, not even an army of their small-minded followers could destroy the restless creativity of the city. I knew it was dangerous to be a Jew. But I had one secret advantage, and I clung to it for dear life.

  I was a Lazarus. And the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter.

  The city teemed with magical folk, living alongside the pure mortals. Vampires, dryads, dwarves; other, hidden, immortal beings—and the adepts, the sorcerers, necromancers, and witches. As for me, I am a Lazarus witch. My power is passed from mother to daughter, and has been so conveyed since time out of mind.

  My mother, bless her vanished soul, tried her best to teach me the Lazarus creed and how to use the power I inherited, and the dangers such a power brings, but I was born rebellious. And when she died suddenly, my training was still unfinished. I preferred to haunt the cafés, debate Communism and literary theory with half-starved poets living on weak tea and rumballs, indulge in mad affairs of the mind and heart that in the end led absolutely nowhere. In short, I was a
young fool, but a happy one.

  The trouble crept up on all of us, a shadow that lengthened over everything we knew. Horthy’s regime was dreadful, but after the disaster of Béla Kun, we all believed we could survive the regent. So we, the Jews, kept our heads down and worked. And we, the witches, kept to our creed, respected the destructive potential of our powers and invoked them rarely. We told ourselves useful lies, that the trouble would soon pass. And a fragile balance held.

  Such a state, balanced on lies, could not sustain itself for long. Despite this, when the end came, none of us were ready.

  And now I hold my breath, my pen hovers over the paper before I write. How can I explain to you, a stranger, what has happened to me? At this pause in my earthly trials, I do not know which is better: to press forward and leave the past to die, or to commit my strange tale to paper.

  Well do I know the power of words. In many instances, I am the only witness, the only one still living who knows of the great-hearted sacrifices of those who are now gone, the only one who can now remember. So: I write this story not to glorify the living, but to honor the dead.

  The summer of ’39 is seared into my mind, and lives on forever unchanged in my memory. Hitler had not yet invaded Poland, war had not yet exploded the world I had known into irredeemable shards. I was still a girl, the future still lay before me, indefinable, infinite with possibility.

  I was still kissing-close to the people I loved most in the entire world. And simple love matters more than magic, treasure, or even the promise of eternal life. It is for love that I now set this strange tale into words.

  Remember this as you read on, for though my story has its triumphs, in the end it has always come back to two fundamental questions:

  Who do you love?

  Do you seek the darkness or the light?

  1

  JUNE 13, 1939: 2:30 A.M.

  CAFÉ ISTANBUL

  BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

  The world I had known ended on a steamy Tuesday night in Budapest. It was so late that only the poets and vampires still remained at the café, and my employer and I sat at our usual table as the stranger from the east told his dreadful tale. I was surrounded by Art Nouveau stained glass and by giant brass hookahs imported from the Orient, but all I could see and taste was blood.

  “You say that the Americans . . .” Bathory’s voice trailed off, and for once he seemed completely at a loss. I watched him light an unfiltered cigarette with his absurd jewel-encrusted Zippo lighter; it was a clear sign that we were all in trouble, for Bathory only smoked in times of deepest strain.

  I took refuge from the stranger’s words in our familiar surroundings. The Café Istanbul wrapped me in beloved, Levantine luxury. Inside the Ring Road, in the center of Budapest, the café catered to vampires, musicians, and wine merchants, an unlikely but nonetheless harmonious combination. It made for fruitful and prosperous encounters.

  The man’s voice shuddered in the mirrored, high-ceilinged room; fear rose from him in a stink. He stood before us in supplication, his hat in his hands, and the very chandeliers trembled as he spoke.

  His words came in German, but haltingly, as if he had to translate the words in his head from another language before he formed them aloud. “Yes, the Americans. They have uncovered a weapon. A doomsday weapon. Whoever can claim it first will have the upper hand in the war that is to come. My people must have this weapon, or Stalin will kill us all. You must help us.”

  The stranger sounded like a madman. Bathory and I had entertained any number of desperate callers at our permanent table on the mezzanine of the café, and we heard many a tale of woe in that terrible year, 1939, but nothing yet as grim as this. As I replaced my demitasse, the delicate porcelain chattered a little too loudly against the saucer.

  A glance at my beloved employer didn’t help to calm my nerves. The count’s piercing gaze pinned me to my seat. He expected me to do what I had always done for him: draw the truth out of this supplicant, as I had from every other mortal that sought his favors. My job was to lull them into doing my master’s bidding, encourage them to do business with Bathory so that he could line his pockets and keep me in rumballs and off the streets. I was still innocent enough to believe the truth protected both the supplicants and me.

  But the truth I now sensed in this strange, foreign man was volatile, unstable. If I brought his truth into the light, all of us could die in the explosion.

  In 1939, I made my living as a servant of one who preyed on human fear in its many permutations. And though more frightful creatures existed in Budapest, Bathory was nightmare enough for most of our mortal visitors. As I now considered this man from the east, the stranger’s fear tasted of bitterness. It was cloying and metallic on my tongue.

  The man’s fears did not originate with the sight of my employer, that much I could readily sense. Bathory scared me more than anything else in Budapest. But this stranger knew things that made Bathory seem tame.

  I took another slow sip of Turkish coffee. As the warm liquid burned a pathway along the inside of my throat, I sent my witch’s caress into the stranger’s mind, and coaxed him into mastering his fear so he would stay.

  The man sank into a cane-backed chair. He held his hat in his hands and balanced it on one knee. His whispers rose into the stuffy air above our heads like smoke, vanished into the early morning mist swirling outside on the terrace.

  “Please help me,” the stranger said in German. His diction was formal, his expression anguished.

  Bathory leaned forward, his narrow, pale face reflecting the Istanbul’s electric light like a trapped moon. “But of course. I am here to help. For a price.” He caressed the bone china plate at the table’s center. “May I offer you some refreshment? A rumball?”

  The man cleared his throat, trembled. “No, thank you. No rumballs.” He dragged his gaze away from my employer, and Bathory let him go. With wide eyes, the stranger stared at the gaunt young composer sleeping alone at the corner booth, his artist’s plate of cold cuts all but untouched on the table next to him.

  I riffled through the stranger’s mind as gently as I could, leaving him to the café’s pretty distractions as I worked. Flickering images, like an old silent movie—a pumping oil well, a black stallion trotting along a cobblestone street—moved through my mind and floated away.

  “I didn’t catch your name, sir,” I said, my voice as silky and gentle as I could make it.

  “Ziyad. Ziyad Juhuri.”

  “And you come from Stalin’s land.”

  “Yes. At great danger to my people, I come.”

  He did not want to reveal his story; he wanted our help without too much exposure. But this Ziyad’s secret was too dangerous to us to allow him to hide his origins. How could we know his mission would not endanger us?

  “And how can my master assist you, sir?”

  “Sir . . .” He addressed Bathory, not me. “I—I know what you are.”

  Bathory’s spidery fingers crept along the cravat knotted at his bony throat. As he considered the stranger’s words, Bathory’s lips parted in a wide smile, revealing the rows of long, needlelike teeth. The man paled and clutched the edge of the table. I hummed under my breath, tightening the cord of the stranger’s fear like a golden leash around his neck. He gasped in surprise, but I held fast. His heart surged like an engine, and then steadied as a thick despair spread through his veins.

  Despair was an improvement. Ziyad straightened his tie, and I felt him relax, as he accepted the knowledge he spoke with a vampire, and that such encounters usually end badly for the human supplicant.

  Now he and Count Bathory could do business. Bathory’s face grew serene. “Yes, I am a Drinker, my friend.” He let his statement linger like the smoke in the air between us as he took a long, languorous sip of his milky coffee. “But what will that do for you?”

  The man watched in fascination as Bathory’s long fingers dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin. “I need help, from you and yo
ur . . . kind.”

  “All of us are in grave danger in these wretched days. In fact, those like my little assistant Magda who thrive in trouble are in a small minority.” Bathory favored me with a fond little smile.

  And how I treasured the old vampire’s sincere approbation. Bathory had lived long, dapper in his antique silks and velvets, and many human assistants had served him faithfully and lived out their mortal days untouched by his fangs. He had once told me that I was his favorite protégée, and it pleased me mightily to believe him.

  The stranger rallied his courage. “I am here to make arrangements to procure this superweapon immediately. My sources have revealed that an American has it.”

  This earned a raised eyebrow from Bathory. “Your sources? Call upon the American ambassador. You describe a matter for diplomacy, not for private profit, yes?”

  The stranger shook his head. “No, my lord. Your guild stretches around the world, Count Bathory, you are the only ambassador I need. I must move through, shall I say . . .”

  “Unorthodox channels.”

  “Yes. And I would pay in prayer rugs or ready cash, pay a premium to succeed.”

  Bathory made a dismissive wave of the hand, though I caught the acquisitive sparkle in his narrow eyes. “My dear Magda here, the daughter of a brilliant businessman, can help you should you wish to engage in trade, sir. But that is no special favor.”

  The man’s face clouded over, and he stroked his drooping mustache and scowled. “I do not come for fortune, or for trade.”

  I caressed the man’s mind as he spoke, and I looked for his true desire. I saw blood, blood, children and women slaughtered in a mountainous place. Their deaths called to me as well as to him, and they demanded revenge. The stranger did not lie. He needed to reach the Americans, find the hidden magic, and kill his enemies before they killed him.