Chapter 7
Dachau Concentration Camp, Munich, Germany
April, 1943
"You must feel hunger. And yet it has been over three weeks since you have had anything to eat, and you refuse the resources I provide for you. You do not drink according to the guards assigned to observe you. They tell me that you cry out during the night, in horrible pain, and even now I can see that you are suffering." If Kohrber felt any discomfort from what he saw or what he said it didn't show. The man paced back and forth in front of the vampire, his boots grinding at the wet gravel beneath him. His voice echoing through the open air.
The barracks Nikola knelt before felt as empty as the court yard but he knew they weren't. There were SS Guards in the twenty barrack buildings behind him and just to the west, past a row of hedges and some electrified barbed wire were over thirty more barracks. But those didn't hold the SS. Those were the source of the 'resources' Kohrber had been putting into his cell each day.
Children, men, women. Each one looking paler, thinner, and deader on his feet than the last. In fact one of them had died. Nikola had been too weak to do anything about it but watch. The man was a coughing, slobbering, quaking mess when he was shoved into the windowless room. An hour later he was begging Nikola to end his life in barely recognizable Polish. Then he died. Nikola had managed enough energy to push the man's folded hands from the covers of his cot before he lay down, and wondered what it felt like to die, and stay dead.
Most of Kohrber's interrogations happened towards the end of the day, and they had always happened inside the confines of Nikola's cell. Why he had been dragged out into the rain, Nikola didn't know, but he figured it was in Kohrber's nature to make things as miserable as possible and if the opportunity came to drench a starving vampire, well…why the hell not.
He had been chained again, of course. Kohrber wouldn't take chances. The chains might as well have been set into concrete.
"Is it your morality that keeps you from taking their blood? Do you wish not to take responsibility for ending a life?" Kohrber asked, shifting his stance and pulling his weapon. He nodded behind where Nikola knelt and a guard stepped forward pushing a wafer thin man ahead of him.
The prisoner was about Nikola's age, thirty but appearing 80. He wore the striped clothing of all his brethren, but unlike the political prisoners who wore red or green tags, this one wore a yellow star. That made him a Jew.
Not all of the prisoners shoved into his cell had been Jews. Not all of them had been emaciated. In fact the last one had been rather large and rotund and even healthy looking.
He had worn the tattered, striped clothing of the prisoners but the holes in his clothes were patched. The tag he wore was red, and he had been allowed the dignity of keeping his hair, wearing a hat and coat. He had been shoved into the cell where Nikola was, talking gaily with one of the guards until he realized that he wasn't on his way to see the commandant of the camp but into a windowless storage room with a single occupant.
Nikola had been up at that time. He'd still had the energy to move on his own and he was on his fifth lap around the cell when the man stumbled in. Their eyes met for a moment. Neither had a clue who the other was. The door closed loudly and they both looked to the blank, wooden frame, then back, warily at one another.
Then, after a long moment, the bigger man scoffed, looked at Nikola with disgust and straightened his jacket, surveying the room.
"Well you're not a Jew." He said after a moment, speaking in low German, looking to the bed with distaste, before he searched the dark corners again. "They wouldn't have you separated from your kind if you were. And you aren't a political prisoner."
Political prisoner, Nikola thought, remembering. The prisoner and the guard stopped even with Tesla, the guard forced to stay with the prisoner because the walking skeleton could clearly not stand on his own. Nikola had begun to lean, himself, just kneeling there. Having to turn and watch the prisoner would have been all that was needed to unbalance him and toss him into the wet gravel. Nikola didn't wish to be the reason for his own added discomfort and chose to keep his eyes trained on the blonde hell before him.
His newest visitor paused, surprised at the lack of response from Tesla then asked, "Tu parles francais?"
Nikola kept walking, trying to ignore the sound of the man's pulse. Trying to ignore the almost overpowering stench of his sweat, or the sweet ichor of his blood underneath.
"Вы говорите нарусском?"
His visitor was baffled, put off by the lack of friendliness perhaps. Nikola wasn't about to make nice with someone who might be food in seconds. He hadn't expected himself to hold out this long and he knew every new moment would be harder. He put one foot in front of the other, his right shoulder against the rough plaster of the wall.
"Nie maszpolskich!"
"So. If you will not kill them yourself. I will do it for you, yes?" Kohrber said, then raised his gun and fired.
The bullet hit the prisoner, just above the eyes. His head snapped back, most of the back of his skull bursting backwards and splattering against the building behind them. The soldier stepped away in surprise and disgust, staring down at the sleeve of his uniform, now decorated with a mix of blood and gray matter.
The man had a healthy pink glow to his cheeks. The way someone should look when they've been out enjoying the cool weather of spring time. He wasn't sickly pale, or near blue from lack of sunlight and exercise. His portly nature suggested that he got more than his fair share of three meals a day and probably with a good amount of starch and meat involved.
Tesla kept walking. The big man kept talking, returning to his poor German.
"I have been in this prison for over a year, and I have never been to the guard barracks until this day."
Nikola's eyes flitted toward the big man and his visitor smiled and nodded.
"Oh yes. That's where you are. In the officer's building outside the SS Barracks. You aren't with the other prisoners. That makes you special, whoever you are."
The big man started toward the corner that Nikola was slowly vacating, perhaps to investigate the toilet facilities provided. Nikola did what he could to move faster, trying to avoid smelling the man anymore clearer, avoid letting the distance between them close any more than it already had. It wouldn't take much, not hardly at all, for him to sink his teeth…even his human teeth would be sufficient. The blood would be warm thanks to all the fat insulating his veins.
Fresh, warm, Nikola rushed to his bunk, gripping hard at the edge and clinging to the bed for dear life, trying to shut down his senses.
He could smell the blood. The prisoner's body had landed almost directly in front of him and the gore that should have been repulsing him, only seemed to draw him closer. The blood was warm and steaming in the cooler air and Tesla was disturbed and enticed in the same twisted moment. The part of him that had never been human desperately wanted to lunge forward, toward the fresh crimson staining the ground. The rest of him overpowered it. He glared at Kohrber, anger starting to boil, and used whatever it provided to push himself to his feet as the first distant rumble of thunder sounded.
Nikola's move startled the big man and he stayed where he was against the far wall, closely watching Tesla. "You are a peculiar one." He said before he found a spot on the far wall where he could lean and slowly slide to the floor. "Word has been passing through the barracks about you. Everyone who is selected to come to the SS Barracks does not return. Did you know that? At first it was speculated that these people were holding secrets and that the SS men were torturing them until they cracked, then sending them to Berlin. But…that didn't make sense. They were taking Jews." The man said, laughing as he spread his hands.
"And children and women, what would they know? So…then we thought. Perhaps there is some sort of testing happening here. As our scientists were doing in our own labs before the war. Testing new weapons. Oh…" The man said, as if Tesla had at some point conveyed disapproval. "Don't think we are only gloomy. We had thought of good things…perhaps testing new medicines. Or granting freedom to those that were chosen. But…in prison, no one is given freedom. And freedom is never freedom until the reason you are in prison in the first place has been eradicated…and we are still at war, yes?" The big man chuckled before falling silent.
Somehow his voice helped. The consistent tone, and the need to concentrate on the poorly pronounced German distracted Tesla from the panic he had begun to feel and the vampire had been able to dial back the smells and sounds that were tormenting him.
"Now, though, now I see that you are the focus. You are what this experimental group has been for. We are each being tested against you. But for what reaction I wonder."
Anger may not have been what Kohrber had been looking for but it seemed to delight the blonde none the less. He lifted his gun again, and Tesla waited for the sights to fall even with his chest.
"You won't take a Jew then. Nor a politician, a Pole, not a child, or a woman." The trigger was pulled, the gun sounded, thunder rolled and the SS soldier that had been standing next to Tesla moments ago collapsed wordlessly over top the body of the Jew.
Nikola flinched but he didn't look to the bodies. He kept his eyes on Kohrber, smiling as he felt the first far away tingle of an electrical charge.
He didn't know if he could do it. He hadn't tried. Even if he could shift it might not do him any good. He had so little strength as it was. Perhaps not everything then. Perhaps only the claws, or not even those, but the eyes.
Even as he thought about it he felt them shift. The transition, which normally felt empowering and pleasurable, was this time painful. It would have been worse had he transformed fully. He let the big man see his blackened eyes, focusing intently on him and trying not to see the pulse beating in the big man's neck. The nervous sweat beading on his forehead.
"My…God…" The big man said, leaning forward, pushing himself to his feet in an awkward three point turn before he took several steps towards Tesla. Nikola backed across the bed and against the wall hurriedly and his action stopped the approach of his visitor.
"Yes….yes. I see you wish to avoid me." The man said, nodding and narrowing his eyes in thought.
Nikola could hold the partial transformation for only so long and with a soft grunt he let his eyes return to their usual silver blue. He was hit with a wave of nausea and fatigue and was grateful for the wall keeping him upright.
"You wish to avoid me…and yet you are weak. Perhaps I am the solution to that problem. And I am a temptation…" The big man paced, figuring it out.
He was the strangest prisoner Nikola could have imagined coming across. Highly intelligent, polite, conversational and tri-lingual at the very least.
Kohrber waited a long time, his gun lowering until the muzzle faced the ground, the barrel tapping against the side of his leg as he watched the vampire.
"No…even the finest and purest blood does not interest you. There is no guilt in taking from the dead. And yet you stand there…dying of hunger, refusing the buffet!"
Tesla's head rolled a little to the side as he considered the prisoner, who considered him right back.
"What was your crime?" The man asked finally, pointing a chubby finger at the vampire.
Nikola took in a deep and heavy breath and said, "Spy. Yours?"
The large man smiled, the expression changing as he grit his teeth. "Treason. Accessory, to an attempted assassination."
Nikola was still smiling and it was unnerving Kohrber. The storm was drawing closer, the rain beating down harder around them. The blood of the soldier and the Jew mixing in the dust. Becoming one blood, one death, one slain piece of humanity that was no longer capable of seeing itself as one breed or another, perfect or imperfect. Neither the soldier nor the Jew was more or less deserving of life. They were both slated to be dust in a matter of years. The same dust.
Just like Kohrber would be dust.
"You have been here for weeks."
"Yes, and on the run for longer." Nikola told him, slumping against the wall.
"Why do they keep you? What do they hope to gain?" His companion asked, upright again and pacing in the small room. His questions had begun to change however, there was something the big man knew.
"Power." Tesla said, then his eyes rose to the light hanging in the center of the room. "But there are some things they don't know about me…"
His fellow prisoners quirked his head to the side then looked up toward the bulb. When he returned his gaze to the pale Serbian he was greeted with a tired, but devious grin.
"Ever heard of Nikola Tesla?" The vampire asked. "Father of electricity."
Lightning scattered across the clouds and Nikola raised his hands above his head. He wasn't a natural attraction for the lightning, he knew that much. The buildings were taller than he was and the trees taller still. But he'd always had an extraordinary ability to control the electrical impulses buzzing around his brain and he used that ability with what remained of his strength. He sent out a polarized call to the ions in the clouds.
He made himself the most attractive target in the camp, and reached out for every source of electricity he could get. He reached for the electrified fence and the radio towers. He reached for the electric lines along the perimeter of the complex and the ample voltage in the sky. He opened his fingers, using the metal of the chain to send out his siren call, bracing himself for what would be the most electricity he had ever conducted in his life.
The big man stared at the figure on the cot. Snow white hair had grown about three centimeters from his skull, though the roots were starting to darken. His eyes were sunken back and there were bags under them dark enough to look like smudges of coal. The already thin man looked thinner, if possible, in the worn pants and shirt, and the stubble that had grown on his face was patchy and gray. There were lines of pain and sorrow on his forehead and at the edges of his eye lids.
But it was the eyes themselves that captured the big man's fascination. Clear, powerful blue eyes that translated the intelligence of a genius, the experience and wisdom of an octogenarian, the strength of a man who had been tried, tested, and had proven himself to his own satisfaction with no need to satisfy anyone else. A man very much like himself, the big man thought.
"I read that you had died, only a few months ago, an old, old man." The big man said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth.
Nikola's eyes widened slightly and his back pulled away from the wall. The big man seemed to acknowledge his reaction and Nikola felt the surge of energy again that pulled him to his feet.
"It was you!" Nikola said, pointing a finger. Outside a spritz of rain hit the roof and the sides of the building signaling the beginning of a storm.
The lightning hit. The chain snapped taut as his arms were forced apart. Every muscle went rigid, freezing him temporarily with pain, heat and cold, every nerve ending frying and healing and frying again. He threw his head back to compensate, struggling to keep his feet under him. He could see the blinding light of the electricity but nothing more.
It arced and snapped and bunched around him wildly. Reacting the way all electricity did. The only thing keeping it from grounding into the earth were the thick rubber shoes he'd been given before the guards had pulled him from the cell. Shoes that another prisoner had been wearing.
Even as it weakened him, Tesla could feel it strengthening him. It wasn't the nourishment he desperately needed, but it was power, familiar to him, and more than enough for what he had planned. With a groan he transformed, jerking his head forward to focus on Kohrber again, slowly lowering the chain, pulling the power with him as he did.
The man in the cell with Tesla smiled a little and shrugged. "It was never my intention that you should come here of course." The man said. He had just as much surprise in his voice as Nikola, but he did a better job of hiding it.
"I was told a great deal about you before I decided to have the note delivered. I wanted someone like you on our side, but Gregory…" The big man shook his head, chuckling softly. "Gregory said you were more likely to go after money than patriotism or power."
Tesla instantly felt shame mixed with guilt. The faces of Georg and Dane and the other Belgian freedom fighters flashed before his eyes. He thought of Bijou again, and the little boy who might have once been her only living relative, but who was likely gone now too. He looked away from the big man.
"It would seem that you are in it now for more than just money, Professor. Yes?" his voice softening a little.
He nearly had the chain to the ground when Kohrber caught on. The German Colonel had raised his gun and fired a dozen shots into the center of the brilliantly lit sphere of electricity before everything around him disappeared in a sonic blast that took him off his feet.
Kohrber flew back, his head impacting the base of the pole on which the Nazi flag had started to smolder and burn, and lost consciousness, his body going limp in a pile.
Nikola let go of the chain. Just forcing his fingers to release required effort. He stayed on his hands and knees, delighting in the cool sensation of the rain as it splattered against his steaming clothing, cooling his burning skin.
Moments later there were hands on his shoulders pulling him to his feet and toward the back of a waiting truck.
The soldiers were coming. Nikola had a plan. It had involved borrowing the big man's shoes for a bit, and would mean great risk to himself. It might mean liberation for him, for the big man, for all the souls being tortured there in the camp. Or it could mean none of that.
"The important thing is that you are removed from this place. And allowed to return to London. Gregory had other plans for you." The big man said offering Nikola the shoes that were a size tighter than he could call comfortable. Tesla forced his feet into them, distracted. He had been, to some degree, manipulated into coming to Belgium in the first place and he was deciding whether or not to be angry about it.
As much importance as he normally put on his pride he had come to more than a few realizations since his 'death' in New York and what he might have considered his second death in Europe. The first of those things was that there was something more important than pride; a concept he had never before believed in called 'honor'. While he strongly disapproved of war, no matter the impetus, he had been shown that one side of this particular war had no honor. If men like Das Fuhrer and Colonel Kohrber were going to continue to be at the forefront, this war had to end.
And he was now determined to be a part of that effort.
"What of you? How will you get out?" Nikola asked, watching the door, listening intently to the approach of the guards.
"I hope to be the one helping you escape. Barring that…" The man shrugged and straightened his jacket again after putting on the shoes Nikola had formerly been wearing.
"Who are you?" Nikola asked finally, the question cut off prematurely as the door opened and two guards came in to grab hold of the big man and escort him from the room.
"Stefan.." He had time to say, before the door was closed and Nikola was left on his own.
It would be several hours of listening to the rain fall before Kohrber came for him, surprising Tesla when the Colonel ordered his men to take the vampire outside, into the storm.