Chapter 2
Paris, France
Present Day
Magnus left the table to find Nikola while Will tried to translate the word zombie into French. Once Elise had the idea of what he was saying the two quickly discovered they shared a sci fi passion.
Helen found the vampire quickly. The café was on a street filled with other such restaurants, boutiques, confectionary shops and bakeries. He had to have seen her reflection in one of the many shop windows because he looked up to her before she got close enough you say anything.
She slowed her steps a little not sure if he wanted her company, and for some reason sensitive to it. He held out his left elbow to her and she closed the distance separating them, linking her arm with his. He had his hands in his pockets and left them there guiding her casually down the street.
"Has your boy recovered?" He asked glancing back in the general direction of the café. "He spends any more time on the ground he'll be asked to leave."
"I haven't a clue what's got into him. I have the feeling he and Henry have been spending too many late nights watching movies from the '80s."
Tesla shuddered at the thought but didn't say anything.
They walked for a bit before he said, "I don't know why you had to bring him in the first place."
Helen gave him a look. "He helped me track you down, and he was the first to suggest that you might have been in Paris. He deserved it."
Tesla took in a breath shaking his head. "So disappointing. Think of the fun we might have had without the youngest along. There are, after all, hundreds of dark secluded passage ways in this city."
"Nikola. I came because I was concerned for you. I'd never before seen you so…"
"Dashing, heroic, irresistible."
"Silent…" Helen said, with just a little heat in her voice that dissipated quickly. "And…" She paused, caught between honesty and dropping the topic altogether. Knowing what the result would be if she spoke the truth. "Sad.." She said.
Nikola's eyes held her own for a moment, his lips parted to respond but no answers coming from them. Finally he sighed and turned away. He spotted a vender a second later and pulled Helen towards it. The cart was full of cell phones and souvenirs. On one side of the display was a collection of snow globes. Nikola lifted one, under the watchful eye of the seller, and shook it watching the flakes drift around a miniature sculpture of the Tower.
He held it up at eye level so that Helen could see it before sending a small measure of magnetic energy into it. A moment later there was a flurry of snow inside the heavy glass ball. Nikola grinned.
"They make them now with plastic, but the old ones have metallic flakes. This one is quite the find." He said before setting it back down onto the cart. The flurry continued even after his hand left it, drawing the attention of the owner who picked the bauble up and shook it, trying to stop the flakes. When Nikola finally released his magnetic hold on them, the flakes plummeted to the ground, some of them sticking to the Eifel Tower. No matter how he shook it the owner couldn't get the flakes to budge.
"Apparently it isn't only Will who is out of sorts." Helen said, amused despite herself at the vampire's antics.
"Oh Helen, all in fun. Besides it's been so long since we've been in Paris. Why not make it memorable."
They walked further down the street, stopping by a vendor selling sweets and caramelized nuts. They were each offered a sample and Helen took one, eating it slowly and smiling at the memories that it produced. None of them had ever had anything do with a half-frozen vampire in the middle of Germany.
Outside Miltenberg, Germany
March 1943
He had decided that it had to have been the Moselle River he had jumped into. He hadn't been unconscious in the train car long enough for it to be anything farther east. That put him in south western Germany as there were no rivers in the north.
From the river bank he had easily found a snow covered road and began walking. The first three miles had been torturous. The slow awakening of his fingers and toes the absolute worst of it. He gained no warmth from his coat, or the soaked pants, vest and jacket. His vampiric healing wouldn't allow him to fall back into unconsciousness and did nothing to speed up the warming of his extremities. It was misery, entirely and without exception.
The sight of the church steeple towering above a rise in the snow covered road and spirals of smoke filtering from several chimneys reminded him of the stories of angels that his father had told when speaking to his congregation, so far in the past that Nikola was shocked he even remembered it. Ironically the angels that Tesla saw were coming from fires, and not celestial origins.
He stumbled stiffly into the town, limping due to one warmed leg, and one still quite frozen leg. There were children about, running after pets and other children. Adults chatting on the streets instead of standing in the warmth of their own homes. An entire population of people that stared with alarm at the frost covered individual lurching down their main street.
A woman cried out, "Ketzel! Ketzel, libeling!" Then ran for the door of her house. Nikola supposed he was a fright, and yes there might have been reason for the woman to shout for her husband. He expected he would soon be met with the barrel of a shot gun, he would hear the click-clack of the hammer being drawn back and he would be ordered out of the town. He could hardly blame them. Covered in dog piss, half-vamped and wearing bloodied, hole riddled clothing; he looked like every monster from every horror movie made, put together.
He was relatively shocked when the man the woman had been calling came from his home with a pile of blankets instead of a gun. Not only did it seem that this Ketzel had an interest in providing warmth to a complete stranger, but he had some of the other men help him as well. He was soon surrounded by well-meaning citizens, or perhaps confusingly kind criminals as he was undecided on whether or not to trust them. After all he was now in Nazi Germany. He was covered by blankets and was being ushered forward.
The blankets were warmer than the air outside and even that small amount of heat allowed him to generate the energy he needed to revert completely back to his human form. He was being guided, or pushed, depending, toward what he hoped was a warm hearth and he closed his eyes, feeling a little too much like he didn't care.
It took him a half hour to begin shivering again. The woman of the house, a short brunette who was being beckoned from all over the house by the name Hagred, had placed a bowl of dark steaming broth in front of him the moment he entered her home. Every time she walked by she would lift it, trying to press it against his lips, force it into his stomach. He finally gave in to her insistence, if only to give her reason to leave him alone.
It wasn't to his liking as far as taste, or nourishment, but the heat flooding him now from the inside as well as the outside sped up the healing process exponentially. He was as human as he would ever be by the time the sun set.
It would be his first, and only night, in Miltenberg, Germany.
Paris, France
Present Day
She had a question that had been bugging her since Nikola first began explaining what had happened in early 1943.
It wasn't an easy question so she decided to ask it without preamble.
"What happened to the boy?"
"I assume he's still yukking it up at the café." Nikola said without pause.
"No." Helen said, smirking briefly. "Elise's brother. The young boy you caught in Liege."
Tesla ducked his head, his mood shifting to something more somber, the way Helen thought he might. She expected him to evade the question again and was surprised when he answered.
"I don't know. Dead. Gone. Who knows."
"Can you be certain of that?" Helen probed, keeping any accusations out of her voice.
"He's dead, Helen. Kohrber left nothing to chance. He found me out in less than a month, and I was 80 years young at the time. A twelve year old boy didn't stand a chance."
Helen wanted to press him further but felt too much like she was dealing with a time bomb. She was surprised when Tesla continued on his own.
"Dane, Georg and I searched all night that night. I looked everywhere I could think of and for a week after that on my own. Yes, there was a multitude of places for a small boy to hide. But he would have been without water, proper shelter or food. Unless he had another contact in that city, there would have been no chance."
"Were you planning on telling Elise?"
"Tell-" Nikola gave a harsh laugh. "Tell her what. That she might have had a brother to grow up with, someone who knew her real mother, but because of me she lost everything? Yes Helen, but I was saving it for after ten o'clock tea."
Helen's eyes widened, some of the old anger at the arrogance of Nikola Tesla returning. "This is hardly about your guilt. She is a grown woman. She has already faced more demons than we even know about. She wants to know what happened in '43 or she wouldn't have joined us this morning. She deserves to know the truth. All of it."
Nikola said nothing, looking away from her.
"She's not a child, Nikola."
That brought Tesla's eyes back her way with a flash of denial, and maybe even surprise.
"He's dead, Helen. There wouldn't even be a grave for her to visit. What's the point?"
"What if he isn't? What if he isn't dead? Or what if he survived, escaped, grew up and married and had children? What if she has nieces and nephews that know nothing about her."
"You really think, with the amount of acclaim she has now that they wouldn't know about her. Or try to make contact…"
"Stranger things have happened." Helen said. Nikola started to turn from her and she reached out, her finger tips resting against his shoulder to stop him from pulling away.
Miltenberg, Germany
March 1943
The fingertips on his shoulder wouldn't leave him alone. Worse still they were joined by a voice that was insistent that he wake.
"Soldiers. Die Soldaten kommen für Sie." The voice said and Nikola groaned. The bed he had been laying on had been moved in close to the fireplace at Hagred's insistance. She and her husband going out of their way to care for their impromptu and uninvited guest. The fire had died down and the sky was still dark beyond the small windows.
„Die soldaten kommen fur Sie." She said again, her face very close to his, her hands grasping his arms now, pulling him upright. Someone else was tugging at the blanket, stretching it in their haste to tear it from his body. He fought the stripping half-heartedly until he understood the goal, and saw the pile of clothing in Ketzel's arms.
A warm cotton shirt, a hand-knit sweater that might have been dark blue or gray. He waved their hands away when it came to changing the rest of him, pulling on the trousers, thick soled winter shoes over woolen socks. He looked around for his coat as he stood, ignoring the coat Ketzel held for him at first until Hagred whispered urgently.
„Ihre Kleidung verbrannt worden."
She looked mildly guilty when she said it, but that did nothing for Tesla. His coat, along with the rest of the clothing he had been wearing before, had been burned. He slipped into the coat they gave him, recieved a weighted sack that contained food by the smell of it, then was urgently shoved out the door.
It was snowing. The flakes were tiny and dry, the air colder than it had been the day before. For a few moments Nikola stood outside the home he had been so recently warmly sequestered in, still trying to wake up. Unsure of where he was supposed to go, or for that matter, why. Supposedly there were soldiers coming.
Since he was the only stranger in the small town it made sense that they would think the soldiers came for him. He turned in half a circle, his eyes adjusting to the dim light on the street before he jumped, the door opening behind him again.
Ketzel nodded to his shocked expression, pulling on his own coat. He turned to Hagred, kissed her, then took something from her hands and nodded for Tesla to follow him. They traveled together into the snow, down the street to a small barn attached to another house. A series of brief knocks and they were allowed access. Inside he came into brief contact with a pair of horses.
Ketzel guided him around the hoofed beasts and he finally understood. There was a sleigh attached, thankfully sans bells. He was urged up into it, Ketzel followed and after the coast was deemed clear, the barn door was fully opened and they slipped out into the night.
Behind them Tesla could just make out a column of dark uniforms on the road west of the town.