Dark Victory Page 3

  His smile grew lopsided, and he instead chose the seat next to me, moving so close to me I could feel the heat of him all along my side.

  “Cigarette?” I asked, trying hard to sound elegant, but not well enough to banish the tremor from my voice.

  He took my offering with a nod of thanks and placed his hat upon the table. A bit rude, but I couldn’t bear to correct him. What did angels know of earthly decorum, and what did fancy manners matter in Budapest on August 30, 1939?

  “Where is Asmodel?” I asked in an ordinary voice. I could not prevent eavesdropping vampires from overhearing our conversation; their hearing was so sharp I could not keep them from hearing my racing, galloping heart, let alone our spoken-aloud words. I did not censor my speech; I didn’t want the café’s staff and nocturnal patrons to think I was afraid, of them or of the ancient demon, either.

  The shadows returned to Raziel’s face. “He will not stir from his prison, I swear it to you, Magduska. The tin is in the kitchen, right where Gisele left it.”

  Gisele’s eyes widened at the news. “Surely it isn’t safe to leave him all alone?”

  Raziel shrugged in reply. I lit his cigarette for him, and he took a slow drag, not too deep; he had only begun smoking a few days before. Raziel was still learning how to be a man. “Sometimes you must balance your risks. He is safer locked in your kitchen than almost anywhere else in the world.”

  I looked at him, watched the smoke curl from his lips. “But it is not safe, is it, my angel?”

  His look was sharp. “You may trust my words, Magduska.”

  I swallowed hard, lit a cigarette for myself. “You, I’d follow to the gates of Hell. I just don’t trust that creature in the tin.”

  I didn’t have the money to smoke as much as my heart desired, so I savored the cigarette I had, drawing deeply and watching the tip glow red. And I considered the problem of Asmodel. I could not use him, at least not now. So what next?

  The waiter arrived bearing enormous leather-bound menus. I ordered for the three of us, a luxurious, final meal before the war came. And I smoked my cigarette down to a smoldering stub.

  “A last supper,” Gisi said. She didn’t look at me, and though her voice still held music, I could see the weight of her visions on her shoulders.

  The poor girl was a frazzled wreck—I couldn’t stand seeing her hollowed eyes, her trembling lips, the burden of her knowledge.

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered, and I crushed out the last bit of my cigarette. “We cannot sit here, like convicts waiting to be hanged! I cannot master Asmodel, we cannot stop the war, so what is left except to run!”

  The two of them leaned toward me, and Gisi held her fingers to her lips.

  “No, I won’t shut up, Gisele! I don’t care who hears me, either. You would have to be a fool or willfully blind not to see the storm on the horizon. I will not just sit here until it is upon us.”

  “You do not understand,” Raziel said. He grabbed his hat off the table, began tugging at the silk edging with his fingertips. “You have already unleashed a storm, Magduska. Asmodel will not stay in that tin for much longer.”

  The thought of Asmodel loose in Budapest killed my appetite altogether. “Then how are you so sure he is safe in my kitchen?”

  “Because he promised. I asked him to stay.”

  I blinked hard with surprise. “You asked him!” I could not grasp what he was saying. “You think that anything he says can be trusted, is any more than a lie?”

  His smile this time was genuine and dangerous. “I know him better than you do, Magduska.”

  I shook my head, my nerves still humming from the cigarette smoke. I looked at Raziel again, looked with my witch’s sight, and I gasped. His soul’s aspect had transformed utterly. Raziel’s soul now shone clear and steady, a candle flame instead of a raging storm of celestial godlight.

  Raziel was a man. I had known it with my mind before this. But now, in the moment of my need, I absorbed the limitation of his mortality like a punch in the gut.

  “But, can you still…”

  “Can I still talk to him as I did in my angelic form? Better now than before. We are both fallen, we both walk the Earth. I understand him better now, and he thinks he understands me better as well. But that is to our advantage, is it not?”

  “It is to Asmodel’s advantage, too, I expect.”

  Raziel shook his head and laughed. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me as if he had never really seen me before, either. “You don’t understand what is going on here, do you?”

  His words made goose pimples rise all along the length of my arms. “No, I am a fool, I readily admit it. Please, explain.”

  “Asmodel and I are brothers, Magduska. He was an angel before he fell—I saw him fall. We have been engaged in battle since the world was young, long before your ancestress, the Witch of Ein Dor herself, became the caretaker of The Book of Raziel. And now, for the first time, we fight on a different plane of existence, for different stakes.”

  His words stunned me so that I could barely breathe. “I still don’t understand, my dear.”

  His smile softened. “Perhaps it is better that you don’t. Let us instead focus on our present troubles. Stay, or go? We need to solve that puzzle first.”

  Now I was on more familiar terrain, and I clung gladly to what I knew, terrible as it was. “I don’t know what to do. The war will soon engulf Poland, and she will be lost to the Reich. Hungary is safe for now, aligned with Germany. But for how long?”

  Despite the loss of the Book, we had fought hard, and with some success. I thought of the imps I had managed to summon only a few days before, without the power of The Book of Raziel to augment my own abilities. The option of running seemed the most rational choice, the most likely to preserve our lives.

  But my own magic called to me—the magic I already possessed, the spells I had learned to weave in the last few months, and the potential magic I could yet wield, if only I could claim The Book of Raziel.

  Gisele interrupted my rather desperate train of thought. She leaned forward and kept her voice scarcely above a whisper. “Eva is fighting regardless. She’s gone to a dangerous place, a world of deception, in order to serve a larger good. We’ve got to fight, too.”

  The mention of Eva made my heart sink. My brave, beautiful friend, with no magic in her at all; she who knew of my sister’s prophecy, and who intended to make the most of the advance knowledge.

  Now Eva had joined the Jewish fighters. She was a foot soldier of the Hashomer Zionists, gathering weapons and other warriors for battles soon to come. Now that she was gone, I didn’t know what battles she fought in the shadow of the impending war.

  “She is a heroine, Gisi. And you know how most heroines end up.”

  “Well, yes. But we’re all supposed to die anyway. You heard what the demon said.”

  “‘We’re deader than dead ducks’ is what Eva would say if she were here with us,” I said, my voice husky.

  “Our Eva.” Gisele’s voice broke over her name. “I know what she would say. It’s too late to run, so we might as well do what we can to take our enemies down with us.”

  Time was running out, slipping through our fingers as we lingered at the Istanbul. Before I could think more on the dismal prospect, the waiter arrived with a sumptuous meal, covered by Bathory’s still-good account.

  All conversation stopped as we ate, but I had trouble tasting the food, let alone swallowing it.

  Still, the meal reminded me of our missing benefactor. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, my voice growing steadier. “No matter what happens, I am going to get Bathory out of his trouble in Berlin. I owe him no less than that. You say he is alive, Gisi. Since that’s the case, then I must do what I can to fetch him out.”

  Gisele stopped chewing in mid-bite, her eyes widening in real horror. “You are not going to Berlin? Please say no. Please.”

  I smiled at her; making the decision to act nourished me like o
ur meal. “No, I would come to a quick end and be wasted in Berlin. Instead, I will rouse the vampires to save their own.”

  I knew that every vampire in the place could hear what I said. “I am going to make Bathory’s case to the Budapest Vampirrat and make common cause with them. Once Bathory is safe, I can consider leaving Hungary. Not before then.”

  Raziel shook his head. “Bathory would not want you to risk your life in such a way. You might be safer in Berlin after all, you know. The vampires here have sworn fealty to the Reich on the orders of the MittelEuropa Vampirrat.”

  “I know that,” I said, trying to keep the anguish out of my voice, and the determination in. “But they know Bathory better than I, too. And they know if Bathory can meet such a dreadful fate in Berlin, any of them may well be next. That should give them some real incentive to help him. I have to at least try.”

  It would also give me something more positive to focus on as the clock ran out and the invasion of Poland became a reality. And perhaps if I survived my encounter with the reigning vampires of Budapest, I would have more of an idea what I must do next, once August became September.

  I took Gisele home, and Raziel and I went to try to at least save Bathory, if we could.

  * * *

  The Vampirrat of Budapest resided within a grand old mansion, not far from my beloved, departed Bathory’s residence on Rose Hill, in old Buda. I had served Count Gabor Bathory four years before he disappeared into the maw of Hitler’s Berlin, and he had never once risked my safety by bringing me through this enormous wrought-iron front gate. But this night, I entered without Bathory’s physical protection, without invitation or warning. Bathory’s life balanced on the edge of a wooden stake; I had no time to hesitate.

  Raziel stood beside me as I rang the front doorbell. Silent, with the fedora perched at a rakish angle on his head, his face remained blank: he came not as an avenging angel now, but as the lieutenant of a vampire’s lieutenant. And he didn’t yet know how to play the part to his own satisfaction.

  Imre answered the door, and I almost wept with relief. Huge, misshapen, with a heart of gold, Imre was Bathory’s enforcer and now I guess he had found a new job. I could count my friends among the vampires on the fingers of one hand—my employment with Bathory had earned me as many enemies as allies among the fanged nobility of Budapest.

  But Imre was a friend.

  “Hello, you big bruiser,” I whispered, knowing my voice echoed in the sensitive ears of the occupants inside.

  Imre’s puffy little eyes widened and he tried to slam the door in my face, but I was too quick for him and wedged my body halfway over the threshold. Bless him, Imre was strong enough to crush me with the door but his sense of decency made him hesitate.

  “Let me in,” I said, too quickly for him to get a word in edgewise. “I know you are trying to protect me, but my blood is not on your head, I swear it. Bathory is absolved from seeking my revenge. You can tell him, and he will believe it.”

  Imre’s scarred prizefighter’s face settled into a hard, craggy granite boulder. “Get out of here, kid,” he snarled low in his throat. “Scram. You’ll get sliced into ribbons, and I should let them at you for coming over here uninvited.”

  Imre glanced over my shoulder, and saw Raziel. “Hey, what happened to your wings, eh? Some bodyguard you are, mister.” A sneer had crept into Imre’s voice. “It should be you in the door. I bet you don’t even have a piece.”

  I tried to shove my way in but Imre wouldn’t let me. “A gun? Here? Are you mad, Imre? I come here with the utmost respect, only to make a humble request. An offer of mutual assistance, if you like.”

  Imre growled again, and his voice was filled with misery. “Go away. The council will rip my head off if you butt in here. Go away!”

  “But think of Bathory. He’ll die if we don’t save him from the Berlin council. It might already be too late.” I looked back over my shoulder at Raziel. His eyes burned like banked coals, and an expression I’d never seen before darkened his features like a thunderhead.

  Magic wouldn’t get me over the vampires’ threshold. I tried one last time to move Imre with words alone. “If you don’t let us in, sweet, wonderful, terrible Imre, the public staking of Bathory will be on your head.”

  Raziel pressed forward, and I could feel his body touching mine. “If you let her in, sir, and if she comes to harm, Bathory may take his revenge upon me when he returns. But I am here to keep her safe, I swear my life on it.”

  Raziel’s words sliced into me. An angel does not swear lightly, fallen or no. And I had never heard of an archangel swearing an oath to a vampire; never!

  The air crackled with the tension of all the things the three of us didn’t dare to say. After a few moments Imre broke the standoff, silently swinging the enormous door open on its huge, well-oiled hinges.

  “Enter,” Imre intoned, “but beware.” He stood back and Raziel and I were plunged into darkness.

  We walked through a grand marble foyer, illuminated, I could see after my eyes adjusted to the dimness, by delicate blue lights. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. I kept telling myself to keep walking, keep calm; remember, you speak for many who can no longer speak, many who can no longer appeal for alliances.

  A low rustling rushed past us, a strange rumbling wind infused with a fetid, ugly magic; I whispered the Ninety-first Psalm under my breath and the wind passed over my skin and away.

  I stopped walking, chilled to the marrow. Raziel and I exchanged a silent glance. I saw he understood as well as I why that wind blew evil omens through the hallway to where we stood: vampires cannot work magic; they feared and distrusted it, and yet coveted magic as a weapon against other vampires, and against other magical creatures.

  Unlike the vampires, I was a Lazarus, a witch of the blood; even before the great witch of Amsterdam, Lucretia de Merode, had taught me how to work spells, I had been able to summon souls. I was Bathory’s favorite protégée in part because of the latent magic in me, and his hope that my magic would be made manifest. Now that I had learned spellcraft from Lucretia, it was my magic I had hoped to trade with the vampires in exchange for their alliance; but unfortunately the vampires had already acquired a magic, however perverted, from another ally.

  Foul magic, this. Magic in the wrong place, out of bounds, if you will: unholy magic. And I did not know its origin.

  I paused partway down the long, darkened hallway, studied the patchwork of muddy footprints crisscrossing over a parquet floor, and took a long slow breath. “The court meets in the great room at the end of this hallway. I can sense it.”

  I turned to face Raziel, and he squeezed my fingers reassuringly with his left hand. “Ready to go in, Magduska?”

  Tension coursed through my body. “Yes.” The calm in Raziel’s voice steadied my nerves. Even vulnerable as he now was, yet I was grateful he still walked beside me.

  We reached the closed door at the end of the dimly lit hallway. Raziel reached forward and opened the door for me so that we could enter together.

  The light inside the grand ballroom was similarly dim: vampires enjoy silence and cool darkness. A faint scent of the grave clung to the gilded walls and dusty parquet floors; for a moment, visions of skeletons clothed in brightly colored skirts, dancing at a ball, swirled through my mind.

  “Who disturbs us without summons?” called a voice from the back of the enormous room.

  “It’s me, Magda Lazarus, lieutenant to Count Bathory,” I said, keeping my own voice low. “I come upon an urgent errand.”

  “Step forward. And bring your companion with you.”

  Raziel again reached for my hand and we walked across the huge, dusty ballroom, toward a collection of wing chairs and love seats scattered randomly near the back wall. The council was not in session, and the presiding members lolled around, resting between their hunting forays into the night. From what Bathory had told me, I knew they could receive my request and make a decision without a formal session. T
he council only formally convened for other vampires: the way the Berlin Vampirrat had assembled to judge and probably exact judgment upon my boss, Bathory.

  I was close enough to them now that I could smell them, the peculiar, loamy smell of creatures who curl up to sleep in the dirt like earthworms.

  Bathory had taught me to avoid the vampire gaze, lest I be captured by their glamour. I seem to be rather immune to the lure of their burning stare—perhaps because I make for unsatisfying prey. Maybe it is my blood, I don’t know. Even mosquitoes don’t bother biting me.

  I scanned the figures, looking for familiar vampire lords. Unfortunately, I recognized them all—and I could not have picked a more hostile panel: hostile to me, to Bathory, and to the urgent mission I pursued.

  The highest ranked, as usual, was a female. She lay sprawled over a pile of big, musty-looking pillows, dressed indifferently in a scarlet Japanese kimono, garish against her grayish skin. Erszebet Fekete, princess of the Carpathian exiles. She was Bathory’s cousin, and they hated each other with all the virulence of family.

  To her right, seated stiffly on a chair, was Attila, vibrating with rage and bloodlust. He was the distant relative of a leading Hungarian Fascist leader, turned by Erszebet only a year ago.

  I was surprised to see Attila still alive, actually, let alone an attending member of the council—it was a bad sign. As a bloodlust vampire, he could never attain the rank of the vampire-born nobility, ancient creatures like Erszebet, or Bathory himself. But we lived in perverted, unnatural times. And such a well-connected Fascist had his own sick sources of power.

  The final member of this deadly, murderous trio was the ancient, cunning Uncle Jansci, the fattest vampire I had ever seen. Bathory had taught me well the ways of the magical creatures in Budapest before he was summoned away. But he had never had the chance to introduce me formally to Jansci, so the massive creature was under no host obligation to accord me privileges as a guest now.

  “Greetings, creatures of darkness,” I began. I kept my gaze low and deferential, not because I feared their glamour but because I wanted them to believe that I did.