The Lightning Vampyre
Me: A big big thank you to TeaTime and Wicked This Way Comes for your reviews! Hope you like this one!
Vergiss alles was ich sagte,
denn es bedeutet nichts
Vergiss alle meine Tränen
Sieh nicht in mein Gesicht
Vergiss alle diese Bilder
Es war nie Wirklichkeit
Jeden Tag, jede Stunde, Minute und Sekunde
All diese Zeit
Vergiss mich
Vergiss wie es war
Vergiss alle Dinge
Was auch immer geschah,
denn ich vermiss dich nicht
und das ist wahr
egal, was wir hatten,
es ist nicht mehr da
Forget everything I said,
Because it doesn't mean anything,
Forget all my tears,
Don't look at my face,
Forget all these images,
It was never reality,
Every day, every hour, minute and second,
All this time.
Forget me.
Forget how it was,
Forget everything,
Whatever happened,
Because I don't miss you,
And that is true,
No matter what we had,
It's gone now.
"Vergiss Mich Bitte Nicht" ("Forget Me Not") by Luttenberger Klug
4th April 1945
Schellingstraße, Munich, Germany
Lenobia
Eighteen, twenty, twenty-two...
It was getting colder.
I pulled my coat around my ears. I was reasonably tall, my hair pulled back in a tight bun. I was often mistaken for a young man. The streets were silent. Anyone who had any sense was hiding, anyone else was in the military. All I could hear was the thud of my own boots against the pavement as I walked down Schellingstraße, and the bluster of the wind against my ears. I checked my watch. Three fifteen in the morning. I had to make sure that I was not too long. Shoving my hand back into my pocket I turned my lighter over in my fingers.
Heinrich Hoffman's last minute appointment for the day was to display the photographic identification shots for the Jewish families of Munich – those that were still here, that is – to Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel. Hoffman was, after all the owner of the most famous photo studio in Munich. Who but he to bear this honour?
And Himmler was partial to a cigar.
Forty-six, forty eight, fifty.
The bold gold letters were dim in the lack of light. 50 Schellingstraße, Heinrich Hoffman. I pulled one of my numerous hair-clips from my bun and inserted it into the lock. Matthias and Uwe had gone on another round for evacuees a few blocks away. This was only a quick job. The locked clicked, and I pushed the door handle down, stilling the bell above the door with my gloved hand as I shut the door silently behind me. Floorboards creaked beneath my steps, bright red banners printed with large black swastikas waved at me in greeting with the breeze from the door. Taking myself around the counter, I pushed open a door that led into the back rooms. It looked and smelled like a doctor's surgery, the scent of developing chemicals rife in the air and millions upon millions of negatives stacked in files on shelves covering the walls.
As I wondered through the rooms of photographs and mugshots, my hand held at arm's length, lighter lit and brushing the edges of dry paper, I felt a wave of calm. How therapeutic this was. Looking around at the bright yellow flames and the wafts of smoke that now reached my nose, I decided that was enough. With all these developing agents something was bound to explode sooner or later, and I couldn't return to barracks with my uniform reeking of smoke. I stepped out into the cold night air again, turned, and inserted the hairpin back into the lock, sealing the deed with a flick of my wrist. I straightened out the hairpin and stuck it back into my bun as I ran. I couldn't be seen here. I contemplated hot-wiring a car, but then the car I would have to leave wherever I got out, it would be traced back to me. I couldn't shoot off the lock to a door and go through a house, a bullet would be found. All I could do was sprint. Looking into every upstairs window as I went just to check no one was up. I wasn't particularly identifiable as an officer, nor even as a woman, I had covered my Mark with make-up, but still, I was well known in this town, the only female in the Wehrmacht, Rittmeisterin Lenobia Engelheimer. All some had to do was say they'd seen me, and I didn't have an alibi. I kept running. Yes, the other operation was a few blocks away, and I couldn't be seen to be coming from this direction. It was probably about a mile's run back to the car depot. The bus and tram stations were long closed. I hadn't been running long when I saw headlights in the near distance. From the width of the thing, it was a General's car. I slowed myself to a walk and stepped out into the gleam from the car's lights.
The car drew to a halt beside me. I slammed my foot against the floor and held my hand out in a salute.
"Heil Hitler." I said, trying to see who it was in the car without moving my head too much. In the dark I could easily see the red collar and stripes of a General on the man's uniform. General stood from his seat and saluted.
"Heil Hitler." He said, nodding at me, "Stand easy."
"Good morning General." I said.
"Captain Engelheimer good morning." He said, his face stiff and worn, his little piggy eyes staring out from under his hat brim. I was far too easy to recognise. He looked like he was about to say how it wasn't safe for a woman out at these hours, and then he seemed to take into consideration that I was well known for my ability to look after myself. "What brings you to this part of the district?"
"I was attending to the Colonel's horse, it colicked again last night." I said. It wasn't a lie, earlier this evening I had been left in charge of the Colonel's colicking horse, "And now I am on my way to this morning's manoeuvres."
"Excellent." He said, "Get in the car."
I frowned. "That is unnecessary General."
"I insist." He said, too seriously for it to have been friendly. Reluctantly, I strode around the back of the car and got in the other side. He was looking at me. Disgusting. Stories of me in barracks had circulated far and wide throughout the ranks, and they weren't the type of which soldiers dream, either. There had been an incident, when I had been new and unknown, where three fellow privates had thought it proper to ask me for my favours, and when I refused, thought it proper to force me. Once came out with a broken leg, the other concussion, the last with a broken neck. To say he came out of it was an overstatement.
He died. To this day I don't regret it. I remember crushing his neck between my left thigh and calf in a headlock, and landing my right foot as hard as I could on his head. He slumped, becoming a deadweight. No one spoke. How they saw me warped from a pretty little daddy's girl who would bring them tea to a killer. From that day on, the other soldiers treated me like a man. If any of a more junior rank dared speak down to me I put a bullet in their foot. I spent my life, to this day, covered in bruises and scratches. No one took advantage of me. I would rather be shot. I hoped General Dietermann knew this for his own good.
"Drop me at Lothstraße, just here please." I said. The driver stopped the car.
"I will take you the whole way." Dietermann said.
"I think it inappropriate to be seen to arrive at manoeuvres in a General's car, they may suspect you favour me." I said, tipping my hat to him from the pavement. "Heil Hitler!"
The General looked put out. "Heil Hitler."
I turned and walked away before the car drove away, I was at least twenty paces away before I heard it go. I hoped I didn't smell of smoke, although there wasn't much wrong with that, most of my fellow officers smoked, although I'll be lucky if I don't smell of wine after getting in the General's car.
Matthias and Uwe weren't hard to find. It was difficult to persuade the remaining Jewish families to cooperate. I didn't blame the poor blighters. We could be spies, informers, it was hard to believe that anything good could come of a person wearing a swastika on their arm.
"Report." I barked.
Matthias gestured for me to go with him, and I followed he and Uwe into a residential flat. He closed the door behind us and drew the catches and turned the locks. The lights were out, the curtains drawn, had I not been a vampyre I might not have been able to see. He led me to a wooden panel in the wall, and I was pretty sure where we were going. These old flats were high-market, most of the ones down this street were reserved for visiting party members, most of them had secret passages that were used by rogue Generals during the First World War to hide British escapees. Matthias knocked on it four times, and with some apparent effort, the wooden panel swung away from the wall. It was lined with a ten inch layer of concrete on the inside. This meant that when someone knocked on the wood outside, it wouldn't sound hollow. I ducked into the tiny passage and felt my way down a set of steep stone steps.
The entire place was a bloody mess. There were at least three families crammed into this little hole, the smell was far from pleasant and children were sitting in puddles of their own excrement. I kept reminding myself that this was better than a concentration camp. Still... I would be having words with the owner.
"Matthias, the camps have better facilities." I seethed.
"Yes, they have mustard gas showers." He said sarcastically, "It's not normally this bad."
"The manoeuvres will start soon." I said, checking my watch, "Once they have, the soldiers won't be around, they can go upstairs and use the facilities."
At that moment, the sirens went off in the city above us. They were fainter down here, but the dread that filled hearts was no dimmer. British planes were approaching. And that meant the manoeuvres would be cancelled, the other officers taking shelter in the basements of houses just like this one. I didn't know how thick the walls down here were either.
"The bloody British!" Uwe grumbled, "Aren't they supposed to be on our side?"
"Shut up!" I hissed, "Not a sound."
Around us came the sound of heavy footsteps, the retreats into the cellars next to the hole we were in. How many inches of plaster separated us, I wondered? It wasn't long before we heard a hammering on the outside door.
"What are they doing?" asked one fear-struck Jewish woman.
"Taking cover." I said, "Stay very quiet."
We could hear the whirring of plane engines, and the screeches and thundering booms of bombs dropping on the city, of walls falling and windows shattering. That one had not been far away...
We must have sat there for half an hour before the sirens went quiet. The footsteps started up again.
"Come on." Said Uwe, "They will have missed us at manoeuvres and we need to get back amongst the troops without being noticed."
I was pissed off. If I had been a little earlier, we could have moved them and had done with. "Fine." I said, getting to my feet. We waited for the footsteps to stop, and made our way back up the stairs again, pushing the door open. I went first, and froze.
The house wasn't empty yet. The soldiers that had been hiding in the cellar hadn't yet gone, several stood conversing in the doorway, and there I was, coming out from a secret compartment in the wall. Fear set in and I felt tears come to my eyes as I found the voice to whisper. "Fuck..."
Machine guns sounded, I made a move to duck behind the wall, but I wasn't fast enough. The bullets struck me like fire, suddenly I was breathing, my heart was beating but I was suffocating... Nyx it hurt so much, my scream choked on the blood that was coming up from my lungs... I thought it would be quicker, wasn't shooting supposed to be quick? How stupid I was, the hole in the heart wouldn't kill me fast enough, the lack of blood meant my body couldn't receive oxygen, so I would suffocate, my organs would fail... Exsanguination, hypoxia... I couldn't breathe... Shit I couldn't breathe...
I felt myself falling backwards, knocking over Matthias and Uwe in the process, the steps taking cracks at my ribs and skull. I hit the floor. That was as painless as anything I had ever known.
28th September 2010
As Eliás boiled the kettle for a much needed cup of coffee later, after the others had all gone to sleep, he noticed that the door to Erce's conservatory was still open. How good an idea could that be? Were we going to be letting Neferet or Kalona in with an open invitation now? He shook his head and walked out from around the kitchen counter, going to close it, and hopefully keep any bad things out, even though something told him that if anything bad was going to try and enter it probably wouldn't use doors. His hand reached for the metal door handle, but the muscles in his arm didn't contract.
Lenobia was outside, in broad, Italian daylight, seated on a garden bench, she seemed to be taking in the breathtaking scenery. He couldn't see her face, but from her strong position, it seemed like she was embracing, or not embracing something, her long hair cascading down her back, fluttering in the breeze behind her. That woman always seemed to be caught up in some mess or another. How could she not have any recollection? Again, asking questions he knew the answers to. It had been the analgesic. That was biology. Fact. But it wasn't fair for her, to have forgotten such a huge event in her life, she had survived the near impossible and she never even remembered the courage it took her. Actually, he had changed his mind. Why should she want to remember it? It was probably the most traumatic thing she had ever had to go through. She would probably be glad to forget it. With the information he had of her, information she didn't know he had, information she didn't even know herself... So strong, so independent, so brave, so powerful. He felt like a peasant in the presence of a queen. The mere thought of her made his skin tingle.
The kettle clicked. Silently, he made his way back inside, and pulled another mug from Erce's cupboard. Filling it and taking it outside, liking the warmth of the Sun on his skin, he stopped two steps behind her. It had probably been his stomach's doing as opposed to his brain's.
"Coffee?" he asked.
She was so immersed in thought that it was like she hadn't even heard him. "Caffeine is useless to vampyres." She said, "Like alcohol."
He sat on the garden bench opposite her, putting the mug down on the table in front of her. "Pity really. I could do with a drink."
She raised both of her eyebrows. "Why bother to drink it?"
"I like the taste." He said, taking his own mug in his hands.
"Despite being acquired?"
"I remember what it was like then when coffee was such a luxury..." he mused. Wartime. He mentally braced himself, as more memories of her flooded back into the forefront of his mind, "And then after we were all just so happy to have it. It soothes me." He paused for a moment, "I touched a nerve." He said, "I'm sorry."
She looked over his shoulder. The famous Eliás Svboda, the most powerful male vampyre alive sitting right in front of her. He was the one they used to call Der Blitzvampyr, the lightning vampyre, back then. Little was known of him outside of the Prague House, other than that he was as clever as he was powerful. The name, almost unpronounceable to her German tongue, held a slither of comfort to it. He was an unknown quantity, it was difficult to know whether or not he was cold and strict or if he was kind. His hair was a funny deep shade of red to the point where it was almost a chestnut-brown, somewhere between maroon and brown, like something you might see in an anime cartoon. Of strange hair colours she was one to talk. Their grey eyes were almost exactly identical, he peered into hers almost expectantly. She hadn't been staring at him when he arrived like the fledglings, but she had to admit, handsome wasn't quite enough to describe it. He was broad and strong with a slim waist, his posture was never short of perfect – her army days catching up with her – she actually couldn't find a fault in him. The closer he was to her, the more she noticed. He could portray everything through the tiniest change in his facial expression, like he could project his thoughts into your head without so much as moving. And there he was, sitting across from her, looking like her like he knew her. Well, not like he knew her, but like he knew everything about her, when he hadn't known her for more than a few hours. She did like him though, asides from being handsome, she liked that he didn't count on that. As proven earlier, women would froth at the mouth for him, and while he noticed, it didn't seem to have any effect on him, no ego-inflation, no showing off. He never once acted like he was God's gift, which was in itself, a quality worth his weight in gold. She particularly liked his attitude, his wit, his banter. Anyone who could take Aphrodite down a peg was fine by her.
"You just brought up some old memories, things I thought I'd forgotten." She said, "And now as I look back I can see it all happening again."
Eliás went along, the memory of her lips on his overriding every one of his peripheral senses. He bit his lip to curb the sensation. "What happening again?"
"You know, that's how the Nazis were voted in." She said, finally picking up her cup, "It was brainwashing. They were going to make the world a better place. Everyone thought they were wonderful, until they got in. They destroyed us."
"I know." He said. He did.
She shook her head, more to herself than to him. "Whenever I look at Kalona and Neferet..." she said, "All I see is Hitler and Himmler."
"But you were in the Resistance, you didn't buy it."
She opened her mouth to ask 'how did he know that', when she remembered that she was quite well known for it in Europe. "It was us against the world." She said, "And, to be frank, I understand why we were such a small movement. It wasn't about, doing what was right. It was about surviving to see tomorrow. If you were caught to be doing what we were, you were shot. You wouldn't go home to your family and children that night. They'd probably be shot too. Anyone who wasn't brainwashed was frightened." She lowered her head a little, "The deaths of millions of anonymous people, numbers, whom they never knew, were preferable to not seeing the smile on your little daughter's face at the end of your shift."
"You did it because you had no one."
He understood that feeling. Sometimes being a vampyre gave the false impression of invincibility, even to oneself. When you began to get to that stage, when you began to outlive your parents, your siblings, your siblings' children and their children, the feeling that you are truly alone in this human world often caused vampyres to become reckless, almost because it made them feel better about their odds of death in comparison to those of their loved ones. Some were driven to despair by it, some to depression.
"Nothing to lose." She said, shrugging, "I suppose. There were several vamps. But we couldn't even put a dent in the death toll."
"You rescued quite a lot of children, if I remember correctly."
She avoided his eye-contact. "It was all we could do, at the end of the day." She said, finally sipping her coffee, "Children with "undocumented parentage", so to speak, easy to smuggle out to France." Lenobia's voice trailed off to nothingness. She sighed, and every one of her troubles seemed to fall out, floating in the air between them.
At that moment, Eliás made a decision. If he shared with her now what had happened between them all those years ago, he would only want her again. And he knew he couldn't have her, for all the reasons he had listed to Friedrich back then. Even though he knew perfectly well why, even though he didn't want to, he still phrased his question.
"Is that how you were shot?"
Lenobia stared. "How do you know about that?"
"We had our Resistance too." He said, fiercely covering the wavering in his voice, "The House of Night was used as a base and as a hospital. I wasn't the High Priest then, but I was using it as a base to research a university thesis, and being coerced into treating the wounded while I was at it. We had a telegram from the French informing us that the German vampyres in the Resistance were discovered."
She bit her lip. "It was only bad luck." She said, "We were caught. It wasn't even a flaw of ours. It was just a case of, wrong place, wrong time. Of course gunfire ensued."
"You were all brought to Prague for treatment." He said, "I saw you there."
She looked at him like he was the proverbial oracle. "You saw me?"
He lowered his eyes, in what to her looked like memory, but it was really full-blown shame. "I went to the Infirmary, to fetch a box of rubber gloves. I saw you there, along with two other vampyres being treated for gunshot wounds." He said, holding up his thumb and his index finger close together, "You must have taken at least thirty shots to the torso. You were this close to dying, it's a miracle you didn't."
"When I heard you talking on the phone, I thought I'd heard your voice somewhere before..." she said, his heart leapt, "I had no idea where or if I even had, I've heard the voices of many men, I didn't recognise it at first, as the British phonetics are so different. That must have been where."
"They operated for ten hours to get all the bullets out of you. I'm surprised you heard me, you were out cold for most of it."
"I was so lucky." She said, tracing the scar on her neck with her fingers, "This..." she said, showing him briefly, "Was where they had to cut to get a bullet out." She flicked her long hair over her shoulder again, and Eliás could almost feel her blood dripping from his fingers, "I was told I wouldn't walk again. I was a fool."
"Why?"
"For being caught." She replied, "It never mattered how many we saved... There were always more. It wasn't enough. There was always one more, screaming at us from behind those metal gates."
Antonie...
"A handful of people cannot stop a war, Lenobia."
Finally, she turned to face him, her stormy eyes the ultimate contrast to the perfect summer's day around them. "Then what are we doing here?"
"I don't suppose you follow boxing?" she shook her head again, "Nor do I, but it was interesting to learn that this year's heavy-weight world champion had to beat a man over seven foot with his brain. He was so fast the Russian giant never got a punch in. There are ways."
"It's a little bit bigger than boxing. We're sending fledglings, children, into a war! It doesn't matter that they aren't normal fledglings!" she clutched her forehead, leaning her elbow against the table, "I can't understand why they've kept adjourning this damn Council."
"Neferet probably wants us to attack first." He suggested. "To make us look like criminals." Lenobia snorted, "Aphrodite wants to lead some kind of Mission Impossible to retrieve the necklace." He said, "We need to make Zoey and Anastasia our priority. Because without them Neferet instantly loses her innocent guise." He continued, holding up his mug as if to say 'cheers'. "Your expertise in breaking and entering Nazi-style might come in handy."
She blinked and her eyebrows danced upwards for a moment, as if she were absorbing a piece of information that she had completely and utterly expected. "Ah... The Czech Republic remembers that..."
"Absolutely."
"There is only one thing left." She said.
"And what is that?"
"All that is left..." she said, "Is to see." She paused again, wetting her lip, "Who is Himmler, and who is Hitler."
Vergiss mich
Vergiss jedes Wort
Vergiss meine Liebe
Sie ist lange schon fort
Denn ich vermiss dich nicht
Und das ist wahr
Und nichts wird wieder,
wie es einmal war
Vergiss mich… bitte nicht.
Forget me,
Forget every word,
Forget my love,
It's long gone,
Because I don't miss you,
And that is true,
And nothing will ever be
As it was once before,
(Please don't) Forget me...
R&R!