Author: linaerys
Title: Made in Hell (1/3)
Pairing: Ilsa/Kroenen
Rating: PG-13 (so far) for minor violence and kinky suggestions
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Mike Mignola and Guillermo Del Toro
Feedback: pretty please with sugar on top
Summary: This is the first in a series about Ilsa and Kroenen's meeting and, uh, other things. In my version of their world, in 1930 Rasputin has yet to make an appearance. Leon Strasser was introduced in The Dueling Club but that's not necessary reading.
Author's Note: The next two parts are on my fansite at http://www.geocities.com/linaerys/kroenen/fanfic.html. They were a little too gritty to post on this site.
Prologue (2004)
Ilsa did not like to spend time in Kroenen's study. The smell of blood mixed with machine oils lingered on her skin after a visit, and the operas he always listened to grated on her nerves, but they needed to work together on this last piece of the puzzle of how to resurrect Rasputin. Locked within her mind were the necessary clues, but only Kroenen could detect the subtle shift in magickal energy when she stumbled over one. She put off going into his study as long as possible, but since she did not want him searching for her, she finally opened the door after the final aria from Salome wound down.
"You cut your hair," he said through missing lips. Ilsa was surprised. He went weeks without speaking now, and saying something so obvious, and, well, male, usually seemed beneath him. He saved his breath for orders and necessities now, and tried to choose words that avoided labial consonants. She fluffed up her hair with her hands.
"Grigori is coming back soon. I want him to remember," she explained. She did not expect a response, and bent back to her reading. He sighed loudly.
"I liked it better long." The word "better" came out clumsily, a wet snarl, but long practice enabled her to understand. She softened slightly. The years had diminished him to a shell, a joke, a freak. Once he had been, arguably, the most powerful man in Germany, the man behind the throne, the man whose vision shaped two decades of world politics. She had been painfully attracted to that power once, and the depths of perversion his hard voice promised.
Ilsa remembered . . .
Chapter 1: Flirtation (1930)
Her father thought it was cute, his young Ilsa in a tarted up version of the army uniform, and any men who might object to it on principle reconsidered when they saw her supple figure encased in the tight leather. Baron von Haupstein was never above using her as bait, and he watched carefully as his colleagues looked her over. Who looked too hard and long, who didn't bother to look at all. Subtle clues built the foundations for blackmail and the toppling of careers, after all.
Ilsa might have spared a moment to be annoyed at being so used, but her father's power accrued to her also. Power and money were everything to a girl whose family suffered so grievously with Germany's declining fortunes. Until recently Baron von Haupstein had found a way to be on the wrong side of every political shift, with a lack of skill that seemed willful. She hoped his mistakes had gained him some wisdom.
The other women at this fete were wives and mistresses, who mingled with ill-concealed disdain. Until Ilsa's place had been decided, wife or mistress, neither group would trade words with her. Their dresses all looked secondhand, except for a few of the actresses, and Ilsa smiled, self-satisfied, as she smoothed down the leather of her trousers. The costume was shocking, to be sure, but garnered more attention than the tawdry silks most of the women wore. Ilsa kept the same smile on her face as she shook hands with man after man. They all seemed to be sniffing the air, jockeying for position within the eddying currents of power. They were all the same, although some wore an army or freicorps uniform, and some wore civilian clothes; a flash of lust in their eyes, an evaluation of her father, and they passed on.
Ilsa stopped paying attention, and merely nodded and smiled automatically until her father guided her over to a tight knot of people near one of the windows. This, Ilsa realized was the power center of the room. At first Ilsa noticed the tall golden man, and who would not? Leon Strasser was blond and charismatic, with an affable manner, and curving lips that made her want to smile with them. He wore a suit that fit like a part of him, and Ilsa was distracted for a moment from her father's querulous monologue, as she admired the way Strasser filled it out. Behind him stood a shorter man in a black suit, corpse pale with thin lips and blue eyes so light they were almost white. He seemed to be listening with half his attention to a man in army uniform, and his eyes scanned the crowd.
Ilsa and the Baron lingered in the outer circle of the men orbiting the pair, and watched their interactions. Strasser did most of the speaking, smiling, shaking of hands, but his every motion was a question, and he checked his companion's impassive face frequently for confirmation.
Finally her father managed to present her to Strasser, who raised her hand to his lips, and shot a glance at Dr. Kroenen. He nodded slightly and Strasser took Ilsa's elbow.
"This is my associate, Dr. Karl Kroenen," said Strasser. The doctor did not extend his hand, and Ilsa was glad. She felt as if bugs were crawling over her skin, being this close to him.
"Ilsa, you got ahead of me," interjected her father, who moved in next to her. The Baron extended his hand to grasp Kroenen's and Ilsa saw a muscle in Kroenen's jaw clench as he shook her father's hand. "He's the youngest head surgeon in the history of Waldfreide Hospital," said her father.
"How young?" asked Ilsa. She realized she had been staring, but her eyes were caught by his watery blue ones, and she could not turn away.
"Thirty-three," answered Kroenen. His voice was hard.
"Like Jesus," she returned, challenging. His eyes widened slightly and some understanding past between them.
He bowed his head ironically. "Just so."
"And he's never lost a patient," Strasser added.
Then, long past the moment when it would have been appropriate, Kroenen took her hand. She jumped at the unexpected contact. He bent as if to kiss it, but instead leaned close to her ear. "Never by accident, anyway," he said, sotto voce.
She shook off his touch, but his eyes locked hers in again when he stood up. She didn't know how long they might have stood thus, but her father cleared his throat, took her arm, and steered her to a different part of the ballroom.
"Be careful, Ilsa," he said when they were out of Kroenen and Strasser's sphere. Ilsa turned innocent eyes upon him.
"How so, father?"
"Dr. Kroenen . . . well, there are rumors. Sometimes he's become interested in someone and they've risen to great power. Sometimes they disappear."
Later she would think that was her moment of choice, her moment to choose a prosaic life, and death in its time, but instead of being repulsed by Dr. Kroenen's admission, and his reputation, she was intrigued.
Somehow she was not surprised when, near the end of the evening, Strasser approached her and asked if he could call on her. Ilsa wondered how deep the good doctor's control was over his associate, and from whom this invitation came. She smiled up at Strasser and kept her eyes firmly away from seek out Kroenen's, although the effort at control left her shaking.
[][][]
Kroenen felt himself growing tense as the evening wore on. He would have rather been in his laboratory, with his latest invention, a mechanical joint that picked up on nerve impulses and amplified their intention. He even had a subject to test it on, sleeping the sleep of the drugged and waiting for his return.
He thanked the fortune that had brought Strasser into his life so many years ago. Strasser's charm and loquacity made him the perfect servant. These years had been hard. He had traveled all over Europe and beyond, gathering followers, sewing the seeds of hate and destruction that he would later reap. He saw dimly his Great Work taking shape. The harvest of blood and death looming on the horizon was merely fuel for the greatest task of all, the opening of the portal. But ideologies were rising that championed violence and control, and soon the engine would churn on without his help.
The girl was a just reward for all his hard work. She was so young and fragile behind that tough pose and the laughable uniform and she still had puppy fat clinging to her cheeks. All her thoughts were written clearly in her eyes, but Kroenen sensed something cruel and dark in her. Something he wanted. Most women were so tiresome, good for one night, and then they were used up, but he knew she would be different.
She was so young--was she even ready for the burden his gods wanted to place on her? "Ilsa," he whispered to himself, tasting the name. It did not matter; either she would bear the burden or she would break.
[][][]
A week later Strasser sat in her father's sitting room, sipping brandy with him for an hour. After they had spoken her father called her in, and Strasser asked if she would like to accompany him to Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg, playing at the Berlin Opera a few days hence.
"I would offer Tristan und Isolde," he said, when he kissed her hand, "but I don't know if you can stand me for so long." I don't know if I could stand Wagner for so long, Ilsa thought, but it wouldn't do to criticize the most German of German composers.
When Strasser came to pick her up on the appointed night, Ilsa wore her most fashionable dress. Her father told her how lovely she looked, even though Ilsa would have preferred slacks. He gave her a short lecture on her duty as his daughter, and saw her off. Strasser helped her into a long black automobile. Ilsa thought white would have suited him better, and she wondered if this car was borrowed, much as his influence was.
He made genteel small talk between acts, but Ilsa could not concentrate either on him or the music. She felt a frisson of fear and excitement in her stomach the whole time. Would Strasser simply hand her over to Kroenen, like a paper-wrapped package? Would there be many of these charades before the true purpose was revealed? Or had she misread everything and Strasser was here for himself?
As they walked down the Opera steps after, Strasser turned to her suddenly, and said, "You have a choice, Ilsa. To be as other women, a brood mare for the servants of the Fatherland, or you can bring forth something else entirely." His voice sounded harsh suddenly, very unlike the smooth tones he used to flatter her at the Opera. A puppet indeed, she thought.
"Tell me," she said. Something told her that Strasser now was merely a conduit for the voice of his master.
"You must come with me now," said Strasser, now in his own voice. "We will talk on the way." She took his arm and they walked into the cool dark of the night.
"What do you know of the Thule Society?" he asked. Ilsa snorted.
"A bunch of superstitious old men? They see Jewish shadows around every corner. My father says--I mean, they waste energy fighting phantoms," she said.
"Your father? He was denied membership. Perhaps once they were as you say," Strasser allowed, "but Dr. Kroenen has turned them into something more." He suddenly pinioned her arm against him. "Magic is real, Ilsa," he said in Kroenen's voice. Ilsa shivered and did not reply. Strasser continued talking, his enthusiasm was boyish, and he spoke of the coming days of glory for Germany, when magic and science would work together to allow Germany to triumph over its enemies. Ilsa had heard such political rhetoric before, and found it tedious.
Strasser turned at a thick wooden door, and let them inside. A set of stairs went down into the darkeness, lit by gaslights set in sconces on the wall. Ilsa waved off Strasser's offer of an arm to help steady her. The stairs went down two flights to a small foyer with a door to each side. Strasser showed her into a dark and richly furnished sitting room on one side, and then knocked on the other one, and went in, closing it swiftly behind him. Ilsa thought she saw gleaming steel and red blood, but the door closed and the impression faded.
Ilsa wandered the room. The bookshelves held tomes of which she had heard whispers, like the Maleus Maleficarium and stranger volumes still. Some bore titles written in characters that made her head ache.
Presently Dr. Kroenen swept into the room. He wore a black enamel gas mask, and bloody rubber gloves that covered the sleeves of his black shirt. Ilsa felt these had been left on to gauge her reaction, and she tried to stay as blank as possible. Kroenen stripped off the gloves and handed them to Strasser, and then the mask. Strasser bowed and left the room.
Kroenen crossed over to where Ilsa stood by the bookshelves. He moved with authority and grace, and Ilsa remembered hearing that he was a master of the saber and epee and had never been defeated on a fencing field. He pulled down a volume, set it on a table and opened it in the middle, smoothing down the vellum with his hand. Ilsa noticed a fresh suture on the back of the hand; the black thread stood out harshly against his pale skin, and a trickle of blood seeped out around the stitches.
She felt and odd stirring in her looking at the hand, and the blood, and the foreign script of the book.
"Read," he commanded. It was the guttural voice she remembered from the ball, and later from Strasser's own mouth.
"I don't know it," she protested.
"Read," he said again. He took his hand away from the pages, and her eyes followed it, but then she brought her gaze back to the script. The language was none of this earth, but as she stared at it the sounds, if not the meaning, became clear in her head. She heard herself reading the syllables out loud. The room receded from her consciousness, and in front of her eyes grew the vision of a ruined church, and a beam of light shooting up to the sky. Her body felt energized with a dark power, and her voice grew louder in her ears, until finally Kroenen closed the book hard. It was like a clap of thunder and drew her back to herself with a start.
"The script drives most mad," he said. "But not you." The words seemed like a caress. "And not me."
"What about Strasser?" Ilsa asked. "Can he read it?"
"Only if I read it through him," Kroenen answered. "He is nothing more than a renfield. But his social graces can be useful." Ilsa smiled at that. "There are certain rituals only a female can perform," he continued. "There are certain books only a female can read. I can't use a puppet woman. I don't know why." He frowned and rubbed his forehead. It was such a natural gesture, coming from a man whose every move was studied, that Ilsa had to smile again.
"What do I get? What do I have to do?" she asked.
"Power over life and death. Money. Freedom from, ah, society's expectations." He made a vaguely lewd gesture that seemed to suggest a female form.
"And what do I have to do?" Ilsa asked.
"Whatever is needed." Dr. Kroenen's face was blank. Ilsa thought for a moment and then she drew back.
"I've heard about these rituals," she spat. "Virgin sacrifices, some strange sex thing." Kroenen smiled.
"I don't think that is something you have to worry about," he said.
She backed away from him behind a desk. On the desk was a letter opener in the shape of a dagger. She picked it up. "I don't want to be a whore for my father's fortune, and I don't want to be a whore for you!" she said. Kroenen stalked toward her, but the expression he made was amused.
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, advancing toward her but putting the desk between them. "If that's what I wanted, you would already be naked and waiting," he said, licking his lips. Ilsa felt obscurely insulted, but continued to back away. Then he said a word. She couldn't understand it but her body could, and she froze in place. He came around to her side of the desk and held out his hand for the letter opener. His other one was resting on the desk, and Ilsa felt the spell weaken for a moment, and in that moment she stabbed down through his hand and into the desk. The sutures tore away and blood welled up around the wound. Ilsa put her hands to her mouth and backed away. Shit, was all she could think, I'm dead now.
Kroenen looked down at his hand pinned to the desk and Ilsa saw and odd sort of smile on his face. He wrenched the letter opener out and examined his hand and the blood dripping freely down it. Ilsa watched fascinated as he caught a drop of blood from his finger with the tip of his tongue. His eyes caught hers, and she felt herself flushed and breathing hard. She told herself it was from the fear, and perhaps that was part of it, but beneath the fear was excitement.
"This will be fun," Kroenen said, half to himself, "I had envisioned our agreement sealed in blood but not like this." Again that strange smile sat on his harsh features. "Your turn," he said. Ilsa stretched out her hand, and it was shaking. He took it in his bloody one, and Ilsa squeezed her eyes tight. If he put the blunt letter opener through her hand, she didn't know if she could keep from screaming, but a moment passed and no pain assaulted her so she opened her eyes again. Kroenen produced a scalpel from his shirt pocket and drew it along her inner arm, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. He pressed his bleeding hand to her arm, and she felt her whole world shift and settle into a new order.
After a long moment he let go. "You'll know if you're required," he said, and she knew it was true. Some connection bound them now.
Strasser escorted her home again, in the car he must have retrieved while she and Kroenen were talking. He said little, and Ilsa wondered if she now had the power to make a puppet of her own. Or to control this one.
Her dreams that night were filled with strange tentacled creatures, and Kroenen in his mask. And behind him stood a bearded man she did not recognize, with eyes wild as John the Baptist's and a voice that seemed to call her home.
Next: Chapter 2: Courtship
Title: Made in Hell (1/3)
Pairing: Ilsa/Kroenen
Rating: PG-13 (so far) for minor violence and kinky suggestions
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Mike Mignola and Guillermo Del Toro
Feedback: pretty please with sugar on top
Summary: This is the first in a series about Ilsa and Kroenen's meeting and, uh, other things. In my version of their world, in 1930 Rasputin has yet to make an appearance. Leon Strasser was introduced in The Dueling Club but that's not necessary reading.
Author's Note: The next two parts are on my fansite at http://www.geocities.com/linaerys/kroenen/fanfic.html. They were a little too gritty to post on this site.
Prologue (2004)
Ilsa did not like to spend time in Kroenen's study. The smell of blood mixed with machine oils lingered on her skin after a visit, and the operas he always listened to grated on her nerves, but they needed to work together on this last piece of the puzzle of how to resurrect Rasputin. Locked within her mind were the necessary clues, but only Kroenen could detect the subtle shift in magickal energy when she stumbled over one. She put off going into his study as long as possible, but since she did not want him searching for her, she finally opened the door after the final aria from Salome wound down.
"You cut your hair," he said through missing lips. Ilsa was surprised. He went weeks without speaking now, and saying something so obvious, and, well, male, usually seemed beneath him. He saved his breath for orders and necessities now, and tried to choose words that avoided labial consonants. She fluffed up her hair with her hands.
"Grigori is coming back soon. I want him to remember," she explained. She did not expect a response, and bent back to her reading. He sighed loudly.
"I liked it better long." The word "better" came out clumsily, a wet snarl, but long practice enabled her to understand. She softened slightly. The years had diminished him to a shell, a joke, a freak. Once he had been, arguably, the most powerful man in Germany, the man behind the throne, the man whose vision shaped two decades of world politics. She had been painfully attracted to that power once, and the depths of perversion his hard voice promised.
Ilsa remembered . . .
Chapter 1: Flirtation (1930)
Her father thought it was cute, his young Ilsa in a tarted up version of the army uniform, and any men who might object to it on principle reconsidered when they saw her supple figure encased in the tight leather. Baron von Haupstein was never above using her as bait, and he watched carefully as his colleagues looked her over. Who looked too hard and long, who didn't bother to look at all. Subtle clues built the foundations for blackmail and the toppling of careers, after all.
Ilsa might have spared a moment to be annoyed at being so used, but her father's power accrued to her also. Power and money were everything to a girl whose family suffered so grievously with Germany's declining fortunes. Until recently Baron von Haupstein had found a way to be on the wrong side of every political shift, with a lack of skill that seemed willful. She hoped his mistakes had gained him some wisdom.
The other women at this fete were wives and mistresses, who mingled with ill-concealed disdain. Until Ilsa's place had been decided, wife or mistress, neither group would trade words with her. Their dresses all looked secondhand, except for a few of the actresses, and Ilsa smiled, self-satisfied, as she smoothed down the leather of her trousers. The costume was shocking, to be sure, but garnered more attention than the tawdry silks most of the women wore. Ilsa kept the same smile on her face as she shook hands with man after man. They all seemed to be sniffing the air, jockeying for position within the eddying currents of power. They were all the same, although some wore an army or freicorps uniform, and some wore civilian clothes; a flash of lust in their eyes, an evaluation of her father, and they passed on.
Ilsa stopped paying attention, and merely nodded and smiled automatically until her father guided her over to a tight knot of people near one of the windows. This, Ilsa realized was the power center of the room. At first Ilsa noticed the tall golden man, and who would not? Leon Strasser was blond and charismatic, with an affable manner, and curving lips that made her want to smile with them. He wore a suit that fit like a part of him, and Ilsa was distracted for a moment from her father's querulous monologue, as she admired the way Strasser filled it out. Behind him stood a shorter man in a black suit, corpse pale with thin lips and blue eyes so light they were almost white. He seemed to be listening with half his attention to a man in army uniform, and his eyes scanned the crowd.
Ilsa and the Baron lingered in the outer circle of the men orbiting the pair, and watched their interactions. Strasser did most of the speaking, smiling, shaking of hands, but his every motion was a question, and he checked his companion's impassive face frequently for confirmation.
Finally her father managed to present her to Strasser, who raised her hand to his lips, and shot a glance at Dr. Kroenen. He nodded slightly and Strasser took Ilsa's elbow.
"This is my associate, Dr. Karl Kroenen," said Strasser. The doctor did not extend his hand, and Ilsa was glad. She felt as if bugs were crawling over her skin, being this close to him.
"Ilsa, you got ahead of me," interjected her father, who moved in next to her. The Baron extended his hand to grasp Kroenen's and Ilsa saw a muscle in Kroenen's jaw clench as he shook her father's hand. "He's the youngest head surgeon in the history of Waldfreide Hospital," said her father.
"How young?" asked Ilsa. She realized she had been staring, but her eyes were caught by his watery blue ones, and she could not turn away.
"Thirty-three," answered Kroenen. His voice was hard.
"Like Jesus," she returned, challenging. His eyes widened slightly and some understanding past between them.
He bowed his head ironically. "Just so."
"And he's never lost a patient," Strasser added.
Then, long past the moment when it would have been appropriate, Kroenen took her hand. She jumped at the unexpected contact. He bent as if to kiss it, but instead leaned close to her ear. "Never by accident, anyway," he said, sotto voce.
She shook off his touch, but his eyes locked hers in again when he stood up. She didn't know how long they might have stood thus, but her father cleared his throat, took her arm, and steered her to a different part of the ballroom.
"Be careful, Ilsa," he said when they were out of Kroenen and Strasser's sphere. Ilsa turned innocent eyes upon him.
"How so, father?"
"Dr. Kroenen . . . well, there are rumors. Sometimes he's become interested in someone and they've risen to great power. Sometimes they disappear."
Later she would think that was her moment of choice, her moment to choose a prosaic life, and death in its time, but instead of being repulsed by Dr. Kroenen's admission, and his reputation, she was intrigued.
Somehow she was not surprised when, near the end of the evening, Strasser approached her and asked if he could call on her. Ilsa wondered how deep the good doctor's control was over his associate, and from whom this invitation came. She smiled up at Strasser and kept her eyes firmly away from seek out Kroenen's, although the effort at control left her shaking.
[][][]
Kroenen felt himself growing tense as the evening wore on. He would have rather been in his laboratory, with his latest invention, a mechanical joint that picked up on nerve impulses and amplified their intention. He even had a subject to test it on, sleeping the sleep of the drugged and waiting for his return.
He thanked the fortune that had brought Strasser into his life so many years ago. Strasser's charm and loquacity made him the perfect servant. These years had been hard. He had traveled all over Europe and beyond, gathering followers, sewing the seeds of hate and destruction that he would later reap. He saw dimly his Great Work taking shape. The harvest of blood and death looming on the horizon was merely fuel for the greatest task of all, the opening of the portal. But ideologies were rising that championed violence and control, and soon the engine would churn on without his help.
The girl was a just reward for all his hard work. She was so young and fragile behind that tough pose and the laughable uniform and she still had puppy fat clinging to her cheeks. All her thoughts were written clearly in her eyes, but Kroenen sensed something cruel and dark in her. Something he wanted. Most women were so tiresome, good for one night, and then they were used up, but he knew she would be different.
She was so young--was she even ready for the burden his gods wanted to place on her? "Ilsa," he whispered to himself, tasting the name. It did not matter; either she would bear the burden or she would break.
[][][]
A week later Strasser sat in her father's sitting room, sipping brandy with him for an hour. After they had spoken her father called her in, and Strasser asked if she would like to accompany him to Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg, playing at the Berlin Opera a few days hence.
"I would offer Tristan und Isolde," he said, when he kissed her hand, "but I don't know if you can stand me for so long." I don't know if I could stand Wagner for so long, Ilsa thought, but it wouldn't do to criticize the most German of German composers.
When Strasser came to pick her up on the appointed night, Ilsa wore her most fashionable dress. Her father told her how lovely she looked, even though Ilsa would have preferred slacks. He gave her a short lecture on her duty as his daughter, and saw her off. Strasser helped her into a long black automobile. Ilsa thought white would have suited him better, and she wondered if this car was borrowed, much as his influence was.
He made genteel small talk between acts, but Ilsa could not concentrate either on him or the music. She felt a frisson of fear and excitement in her stomach the whole time. Would Strasser simply hand her over to Kroenen, like a paper-wrapped package? Would there be many of these charades before the true purpose was revealed? Or had she misread everything and Strasser was here for himself?
As they walked down the Opera steps after, Strasser turned to her suddenly, and said, "You have a choice, Ilsa. To be as other women, a brood mare for the servants of the Fatherland, or you can bring forth something else entirely." His voice sounded harsh suddenly, very unlike the smooth tones he used to flatter her at the Opera. A puppet indeed, she thought.
"Tell me," she said. Something told her that Strasser now was merely a conduit for the voice of his master.
"You must come with me now," said Strasser, now in his own voice. "We will talk on the way." She took his arm and they walked into the cool dark of the night.
"What do you know of the Thule Society?" he asked. Ilsa snorted.
"A bunch of superstitious old men? They see Jewish shadows around every corner. My father says--I mean, they waste energy fighting phantoms," she said.
"Your father? He was denied membership. Perhaps once they were as you say," Strasser allowed, "but Dr. Kroenen has turned them into something more." He suddenly pinioned her arm against him. "Magic is real, Ilsa," he said in Kroenen's voice. Ilsa shivered and did not reply. Strasser continued talking, his enthusiasm was boyish, and he spoke of the coming days of glory for Germany, when magic and science would work together to allow Germany to triumph over its enemies. Ilsa had heard such political rhetoric before, and found it tedious.
Strasser turned at a thick wooden door, and let them inside. A set of stairs went down into the darkeness, lit by gaslights set in sconces on the wall. Ilsa waved off Strasser's offer of an arm to help steady her. The stairs went down two flights to a small foyer with a door to each side. Strasser showed her into a dark and richly furnished sitting room on one side, and then knocked on the other one, and went in, closing it swiftly behind him. Ilsa thought she saw gleaming steel and red blood, but the door closed and the impression faded.
Ilsa wandered the room. The bookshelves held tomes of which she had heard whispers, like the Maleus Maleficarium and stranger volumes still. Some bore titles written in characters that made her head ache.
Presently Dr. Kroenen swept into the room. He wore a black enamel gas mask, and bloody rubber gloves that covered the sleeves of his black shirt. Ilsa felt these had been left on to gauge her reaction, and she tried to stay as blank as possible. Kroenen stripped off the gloves and handed them to Strasser, and then the mask. Strasser bowed and left the room.
Kroenen crossed over to where Ilsa stood by the bookshelves. He moved with authority and grace, and Ilsa remembered hearing that he was a master of the saber and epee and had never been defeated on a fencing field. He pulled down a volume, set it on a table and opened it in the middle, smoothing down the vellum with his hand. Ilsa noticed a fresh suture on the back of the hand; the black thread stood out harshly against his pale skin, and a trickle of blood seeped out around the stitches.
She felt and odd stirring in her looking at the hand, and the blood, and the foreign script of the book.
"Read," he commanded. It was the guttural voice she remembered from the ball, and later from Strasser's own mouth.
"I don't know it," she protested.
"Read," he said again. He took his hand away from the pages, and her eyes followed it, but then she brought her gaze back to the script. The language was none of this earth, but as she stared at it the sounds, if not the meaning, became clear in her head. She heard herself reading the syllables out loud. The room receded from her consciousness, and in front of her eyes grew the vision of a ruined church, and a beam of light shooting up to the sky. Her body felt energized with a dark power, and her voice grew louder in her ears, until finally Kroenen closed the book hard. It was like a clap of thunder and drew her back to herself with a start.
"The script drives most mad," he said. "But not you." The words seemed like a caress. "And not me."
"What about Strasser?" Ilsa asked. "Can he read it?"
"Only if I read it through him," Kroenen answered. "He is nothing more than a renfield. But his social graces can be useful." Ilsa smiled at that. "There are certain rituals only a female can perform," he continued. "There are certain books only a female can read. I can't use a puppet woman. I don't know why." He frowned and rubbed his forehead. It was such a natural gesture, coming from a man whose every move was studied, that Ilsa had to smile again.
"What do I get? What do I have to do?" she asked.
"Power over life and death. Money. Freedom from, ah, society's expectations." He made a vaguely lewd gesture that seemed to suggest a female form.
"And what do I have to do?" Ilsa asked.
"Whatever is needed." Dr. Kroenen's face was blank. Ilsa thought for a moment and then she drew back.
"I've heard about these rituals," she spat. "Virgin sacrifices, some strange sex thing." Kroenen smiled.
"I don't think that is something you have to worry about," he said.
She backed away from him behind a desk. On the desk was a letter opener in the shape of a dagger. She picked it up. "I don't want to be a whore for my father's fortune, and I don't want to be a whore for you!" she said. Kroenen stalked toward her, but the expression he made was amused.
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, advancing toward her but putting the desk between them. "If that's what I wanted, you would already be naked and waiting," he said, licking his lips. Ilsa felt obscurely insulted, but continued to back away. Then he said a word. She couldn't understand it but her body could, and she froze in place. He came around to her side of the desk and held out his hand for the letter opener. His other one was resting on the desk, and Ilsa felt the spell weaken for a moment, and in that moment she stabbed down through his hand and into the desk. The sutures tore away and blood welled up around the wound. Ilsa put her hands to her mouth and backed away. Shit, was all she could think, I'm dead now.
Kroenen looked down at his hand pinned to the desk and Ilsa saw and odd sort of smile on his face. He wrenched the letter opener out and examined his hand and the blood dripping freely down it. Ilsa watched fascinated as he caught a drop of blood from his finger with the tip of his tongue. His eyes caught hers, and she felt herself flushed and breathing hard. She told herself it was from the fear, and perhaps that was part of it, but beneath the fear was excitement.
"This will be fun," Kroenen said, half to himself, "I had envisioned our agreement sealed in blood but not like this." Again that strange smile sat on his harsh features. "Your turn," he said. Ilsa stretched out her hand, and it was shaking. He took it in his bloody one, and Ilsa squeezed her eyes tight. If he put the blunt letter opener through her hand, she didn't know if she could keep from screaming, but a moment passed and no pain assaulted her so she opened her eyes again. Kroenen produced a scalpel from his shirt pocket and drew it along her inner arm, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. He pressed his bleeding hand to her arm, and she felt her whole world shift and settle into a new order.
After a long moment he let go. "You'll know if you're required," he said, and she knew it was true. Some connection bound them now.
Strasser escorted her home again, in the car he must have retrieved while she and Kroenen were talking. He said little, and Ilsa wondered if she now had the power to make a puppet of her own. Or to control this one.
Her dreams that night were filled with strange tentacled creatures, and Kroenen in his mask. And behind him stood a bearded man she did not recognize, with eyes wild as John the Baptist's and a voice that seemed to call her home.
Next: Chapter 2: Courtship