18. Screw your courage to the sticking-place

"Looks like a betrayal... sounds like a betrayal... feels like a betrayal." Spike completed his fifth walk around the cell and stopped. "We have been betrayed, haven't we?"

"If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck... could it be a swan?" Drusilla frowned and sat at the table. "The important thing is that we are together again." She turned to Newkirk, who was sitting on the cot.

The corporal was not surprised by the turn of events. Instead, he was angry. "He wanted to stop the Krauts' evil plans, my arse."

"Don't tell me that you believe everything I say." Spike shrugged. "I'm evil. We don't keep our word or tell the truth all the time."

"I can see that now." Newkirk stood up and looked around. "This cell is not that sturdy. Why haven't you broken down the door yet?"

"Some nasty spell," Dru pouted. "I told you so when you came to me the other night."

"Oh, yeah," Spike narrowed his eyes. "What's with you two, anyway?"

"I don't talk to you, Spike," Newkirk glared at him. "Just wait till I get out of here. I'll rip your bloody head off!"

"He sounds so much like Angelus... I miss him and Darla..." Drusilla giggled. "We'll be such a happy family."

"Sod off! You don't have to bring that wanker into the conversation every two words." Spike snapped. "And what have you two been doing behind my back?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Drusilla said with a mischievous smile.

"Don't look at me, I was sleepwalking," Newkirk shrugged.

"I've seen the marks on his neck, Dru! It's Paris all over again!"

"Paris?" Newkirk grinned.

"Lucien didn't mean anything to me," Drusilla shrugged. "He wasn't even alive."

"I wouldn't blame him," Newkirk lied down to stare at the ceiling.

"Newkirk, I'll kill you," Spike growled. "I'll kill him, Dru."

"Can I play with him some more before you kill him?" Drusilla stood up and walked towards Newkirk.

Newkirk got up quickly. "Stay away from me you two, bloody vampires! This is your own fault, Spike. You're a plank if you think those wankers are going to let you and your bird go after you kill me. They must be digging three holes out there to throw our bodies as we speak!"

"Actually, only one will be needed, since Spike and I will just dust away," Drusilla nodded absently.

"Really?" Newkirk frowned as he pictured that. "Anyway, Spike, you betrayed me. That backfired on you, which makes me very happy."

"Good! Now, who wants more tea?" Drusilla went back to the table.

Spike and Newkirk stared at her for a moment. The vampire shrugged. "Lights are on but no one is home... that's why I love her so much, I guess."

"You won't make me feel sorry for you, Spike. Both of you are crackers!" He went back to the cot.

"What I don't get is why you kept me going back and forth, from and to Hammelburg, when you could call Newkirk anytime you wanted?"

Drusilla shrugged. "Wasn't it more fun that way?... The lady in distress with two knights in shining armor coming to the rescue?"

"Dru, you've never been in distress... and it's been a while since you were a lady." Spike shook his head and paced some more.

Newkirk winced suddenly. "Oh, no..."

"What? What's wrong?" Spike turned to see him sitting on the cot and looking miserable.

"It just dawned on me that if I've been here for real, I must've walked all the way from Hammelburg."

"So?"

"At night and in my nightshirt..." Newkirk pressed one hand on his forehead. "No wonder Countess Elizabeth thought she had seen me before... I must've crossed her garden like a half-dozen times!"

"In your nightshirt," Spike snorted. "You got lucky no one shot you."

Newkirk sighed. He would never see the end of it if the guys at the Stalag only knew.

"Oh, oh... Guess who's coming to dinner..." Drusilla sang, looking at the door.

Captain Grunwald came in with two of his men. He was particularly smiley this evening as his plan was finally paying off. He stepped in front of Newkirk. "Get up,"he said.

Newkirk smirked and shrugged. "Make me."

Immediately, the two guards stomped in and shoved him to the ground. Newkirk sat up with his elbows on his knees and glared.

"You show your spirit, Englander. I admire that in a soldier." Grunwald bowed slightly. "There's no need to antagonize. I have understood that you open safe boxes."

"That's the one thing you've got right, Gov'nor. But, unlike others," he glare at Spike, "I don't work for Nazis. It's a matter of ethics in the profession, you know?"

"This is not an employment offer. You will work for me and that's all."

"Blimey! This last week I've been threatened by the best. If I move to me right, me friends die, if I move to me left, same thing. I'd like to see you trying to match that."

Grunwald turned to Spike.

"Don't look at me. I made the delivery. I'm not your bloody hit-man." He shrugged and sat on the cot. "You promised to let me and my girlfriend go and we're still here. Why's that?"

"All in good time, my friend. He takes care of the box and I'll take care of you."

"I don't like the sound of that, Spike. If I were you, I wouldn't turn me back on him."

"You heard the man, I think we will leave now." Spike stood up and took Drusilla by the hand.

"No," said she. "The table is served and the guests are about to arrive." She pouted.

"I'm afraid that nobody leaves until I say so." Grunwald signed for the guard to get Newkirk on his feet. "Listen, boy. You do as I say or-"

"Are you going to torture him?" Drusilla's eyes glowed with excitement. "Can I help?"

Newkirk and Spike turned at the same time. "Drusilla!" they said.

"Nobody is torturing anybody!" Captain Grunwald breathed deeply. "Spike will kill you if you don't do as I say!"

"Oh, yeah, put it all on me." Spike snorted. "I did my part and that's it, I'm closed for business."

"I'll personally kill your girlfriend."

The vampire shook his head and shrugged. He turned to Newkirk. "The store is open again. Sorry, mate, nothing personal."

Newkirk rolled his eyes. "All right, let's say that I cooperate and you show me the safe box. I don't guarantee anything. A witch put a spell on me. I'm completely disabled, can't touch a safe box or listening to the mechanism whatsoever. I don't see how I could-"

"Find the way!" Grunwald began to lose his patience. "My guards will escort you and Spike to the Supernatural History Museum. Drusilla will be waiting for you-"

"In the chamber of torture?"

"I have no need to torture anybody!" said Grunwald through his teeth. "If this thief fails, you all die!"

()o()o()

Hogan spent time in the library. He gathered information about Russian mythology and vampires and hexes... It seemed that his world had taken a wrong turn somewhere and the war had expanded its frontiers to the Never Neverland. He chuckled. Never in his life had he seen so many details about something that was supposed to be make believe. Tales for children...

"Colonel Hogan?" Schultz came in slowly. "Am I interrupting you?"

"Not at all, Schultz. What is it?" Hogan replaced the book he was reading. "Can't you sleep either?"

"Any news on Newkirk? It's been almost three hours since he left with that vampire." He stressed the name.

"I know. But Newkirk is very clever. He can take care of himself."

"Under normal circumstances, maybe. But he's not himself lately. You know-"

Hogan nodded. "Waiting is a little tedious, but I'm afraid that this mission is Newkirk's now. I'm here to back him up with some plan B."

"Do you have any plan B yet?"

"Well, no. But I'm working on it." He turned to the sergeant and grinned. "Schultz, what do you know about vampires?"

"What everybody knows, I guess," he shrugged. "That they drink blood and sleep in coffins..."

"That Spike introduced himself as William the Bloody. Have you heard the name before?"

Countess Elizabeth came in at that very moment. She went straight to one section of her books and pulled out one big volume. The title was Vampyr.

"Perhaps you want to read about him before going to bed."

Hogan smiled and took the book with both hands. "Heavy reading." He took it to the coffee table and opened the index.

"Chapter thirty-eight, under the name of the Scourge of Europe."

Hogan looked up at her and tilted his head. "Do you know what I'm looking for?"

The lady sat in front of him and nodded. "His name is William, born in London, where he died in eighteen eighty. That was the night when Drusilla turned him into a vampire. He's known as William the Bloody, or Spike. He earned that name from the way he tortures his victims. He nailed their brains with railroad spikes before killing them."

Schultz and Hogan exchanged glances. Both were thinking of Newkirk, outside with that monster.

"His only weakness is his sire. The vampire that turned him." Elizabeth looked for a picture in the book. "Her name is Drusilla. She was a good girl bound to be a nun until eighteen sixty when an extremely vicious vampire known as Angelus fixed his deviant mind on her. He felt her purity of heart and special powers."

"Special powers?" Hogan said absently while looking at the picture. She seemed very young and fragile; her big dark eyes stared intently at him. Her long, curly dark hair framed a beautiful face, rather sad and innocent.

"She had psychic abilities and the power of foretelling the future. Angelus became obsessed with her and wanted to destroy her. He tortured and killed all her family. He followed her to the convent where she had sought refuge and killed everyone in there. Angelus' atrocities drove her crazy. Only then, he decided to turn her into a vampire, as a testimony to his talent."

"So, she's crazy and a vampire?" Schultz dared to intervene.

"No just that. Besides the standard vampire powers, she can also get into people's minds and make them see whatever she wants. She can lure them into her dominion and she is a seer too."

"Colonel Klink, he's under her power then?" The sergeant began to understand the strange things that had been happening since they left the Stalag.

Hogan was pensive for a moment. Then, he frowned. "And they're always together, Spike and Drusilla?"

"Apparently," the countess said.

"I don't understand. We've seen him but where is she?" Schultz asked.

Hogan stared at Drusilla's picture. "You say that she can lure people from a distance? How far is that? Let's say, Hammelburg?"

Countess Elizabeth smiled. "What are you pondering, Colonel Hogan?"

"Something that Newkirk said about certain dreams. He walks into the forest to a castle. He goes down to the basement and finds a woman trapped in a cell under a spell..."

"But those are just dreams." Schultz turned to the countess. "Poor Englander, he's been sleepwalking in the camp, at midnight, in his nightshirt with this cold."

"A nightshirt?" It was the countess' turn to look surprised. "White and stripped?"

Hogan stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's been happening several nights this week. I thought I was seeing a ghost," she chuckled. "But, now that I think about it, it might be your man. I said I thought I had seen him before."

"Where?"

"Through my garden. Up the hill to." Her eyes glowed with excitement. "Kohler Schloss."

"Newkirk has been walking from Hammelburg to Nuremberg and back, at night?" Schultz was amazed.

"All right, let's say that there is a strong connection between his dreams and that castle." Hogan began to pace. "We could assume that Drusilla is held captive in there. Gestapo, very likely... Spike has been harassing Newkirk to come with him..."

"So, it was a trap?" The countess asked.

"I shall assume that in order to proceed." Hogan shrugged. "Maybe I should pay the people of the castle a visit, see what's in there."

"You have to take me with you, colonel, please," Schultz stood up.

"All right." Hogan smiled. "Countess Elizabeth, would you mind keeping an eye on Colonel Klink and Mr. Jones? I need a free pass for the night."

"Certainly," she said. "Anything else?"

"This book. I need to refresh my knowledge on vampires. Until now, I thought all of them looked like Bela Lugosi.*"

"I'll send you some tea." She got up and left.

()o()o()

The Supernatural History Museum was located in the ancient part of the city right behind the marketplace. Only a few people were aware of its existence and less than half of them visited it per year. Moreover, the war and the raids had ended up by closing the building indefinitely.

The museum guard stared at this group of people wanting to enter at such odd times. He did not recognize the faces but this was the third time in one month that a group of soldiers had come by. They always brought someone in shackles and always asked to see the Russian exhibition at the end of the hall.

Newkirk watched his captors very attentively while the guard opened the door. In a quick motion, completely unnoticed, he produced a card from under his sleeve and tossed it on the street.

"Third door on your right." The guard looked at the group with wary eyes. "What is going on in that exhibition? You keep coming in but nobody comes out."

"What? W-what does he say?" Newkirk did not trust his lip reading in German but the words he caught at did not seem too cheerful.

Spike shrugged. "Don't speak Kraut."

The guards pushed Newkirk to move ahead. He complied hesitantly.

"These are the kind of jobs I hate, you know?" He said to no one in particular. "You never know when they're going to end and how much they're going to hurt."

They walked down the hallway into a gallery all decorated with Russian motifs. There were some authentic objects but most of them were imitations. Being a connoisseur, Captain Grunwald dreamed of filling the gallery with the original treasures. Once Germany had conquered the Russian Front, he would be in charge of the requisition and exhibition.

The guards walked to a door at the rear of the room. The place was a disaster zone, as though no one had cleaned and organized it in a long time. The safe box was hidden under a ton of papers and files right in the corner opposite the door.

Newkirk recognized the model as one of the easiest to crack and wondered why they had not found anyone else to do the job. One of the soldiers opened the shackles and pushed him towards the box.

"Schnell!"

Memories of his last time in Klink's office came to Newkirk's mind the moment that he crouched down in front of the safe box. He shuddered. He took his gloves off and rubbed his hands together. He cracked his knuckles and cleared his throat.

Spike glared. "What a bag of wank! Quit the act and open that bugger!"

Newkirk looked up at him. "Are you sure you don't have a bit of German in you?"

"Yeah, but I've drunk quite a few." Spike knelt down. "What is it? It ain't gonna bite you."

"Oh, that's what you think." Newkirk sighed and touched the box dial. He managed to rotate it a couple of times before his fingers began to burn. He winced and withdrew immediately. The pain crawled to his arms. Newkirk sat back. "Blimey! It used to be so easy in me younger years."

"That can be fixed," Spike grinned. "I could turned you into a vampire and that bloody curse wouldn't affect you anymore."

"Or I could muzzle you while I think what else to do." Newkirk stared at his fingers and shook his head. "Mental power's got to count for something."

"Can you do that? Block the pain just by thinking about it?"

"They say it's possible," he shrugged. "I may try." He closed his eyes and slowly laid his fingers on the box. The heath was intense but he found out that it made his fingertips more sensitive to the movements of the dial. He sweated and his hands trembled. "It's not working, it's not working," he whispered. Even so, he refused to let go the dial. One last click and he fell back overwhelmed by excruciating pain.

"By George, I think you made it!" Spike tried the handle and the door opened.

Newkirk sat back, nursing his aching hands. It had been rather faster and easier than he had thought. It was over. Just like that, the whole thing was over at last. He was so glad that he did not even care about the witch. She might not like the turn of events but there was not much she could do now.

"Just don't make me do it again," he said.

Newkirk was not paying much attention to what was inside the box. All he could see was the soldiers getting a black book. Someone read it and laughed. The other shook his head. There was something else in there, one small black orb at the rear. Newkirk was about to get it for a closer look when Spike grabbed him by the arm and threw him to the other side of the room.

The soldiers laughed and kept examining the contents of the box.

"What did you do that for?" Newkirk was angry and curious at the same time. He watched as one guard took out the orb. Then, Spike pushed him behind a pedestal and covered him with his own body.

"Close your eyes!"

A blinding light filled the place. Newkirk shut his eyes and covered his head with his arms. The silence was terrifying but he did not dare to look. Minutes passed until Newkirk felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Tough," Spike said. "You should've seen this, the poor blokes just disintegrated." He rubbed his eyes and blinked.

Newkirk looked around. Traces of the uniforms were scattered all over and a smell of burning flesh made him nauseous. "This can't be happening... This is not real! What the hell happened, anyway?" He got up and looked at the vampire. "Are you okay?"

"The light burned my eyes." He sounded rather annoyed.

Newkirk crouched and waved his hand in front of Spike. "Are you blind?"

"Not for long. I just need a couple of minutes." He sat down with his back against the wall with his eyes closed. "And don't even think of making jokes about being blind as a bat. I've heard them all."

Newkirk was still too shaky and dazzled to attempt getting up right away. He sat for a moment, staring at the remains of the soldiers. Although there was no blood, the rags of burned uniforms were a nightmarish vision. He had to turn some other way.

"What was that ruddy thing? Is that the new weapon?" He asked.

"Nope, just an orb of lightning bolt." Spike said matter-of-factly. "Merlin's old recipe for don't mess with the supernatural or else." Spike chuckled. "Someone must've been taking cooking lessons."

"Baba Yaga?" Newkirk asked.

"Basically," the vampire said.

Newkirk crawled to the safe box. "What are they made of?"

"None of your bloody business!" The urge on Spike's voice was more a warning than a threat. "Just stay away from that box, you hear me?"

"All right, keep your knickers on," Newkirk said with a shake of his head.

Spike kept his eyes closed. "There are things in magic that must never get into human hands. It's too bloody dangerous... Apocalyptic consequences. No joke on that. "

Newkirk sat back again. "Does it hurt?"

"The Apocalypse?"

"Your eyes, nitwit."

Spike sighed. "It's nothing permanent." He turned to Newkirk and squinted. "I can almost see you again. Not a nice view, though."

"Awfully funny," Newkirk smirked while leafing through the diary. He was not in the mood for reading and only stopped at the headlines of the first pages. "Diary of Otto Eichenholz: I finally found a resting place for Koshchei's soul... In an island, under an oak tree, inside an egg, inside a hare..." He shrugged. "Nothing new. This is the same rubbish that it's in every book about Russian folk tales."

"So, what a surprise. This is the end of the road." Spike got up and headed for the door.

Newkirk followed him. "But where are you going?"

"Back to the castle to fetch my girlfriend."

Newkirk had to run. "Listen. If you get there now, they'll kill you and Drusilla."

"Oh, sure. And you're telling me this because you're fond of us and don't want anything bad happening, right?" Spike crossed his arms on his chest.

"Of course not. But I need you... I mean your ears. This was just a trap. It's not over yet. That ruddy thing is somewhere around. This blasting box wasn't here just by chance. Someone took real care to hide that egg and I need to find it as soon as possible." Newkirk's hands began to hurt again. "That Kraut in the castle doesn't know what happened here. He won't expect us to return so soon. We'll get him after we get the egg, all right?"

Spike stared at him, pondering his options. "All right. But if we fail, I still can kill you."

"That's the spirit!"

"Where do we start, then?"

Newkirk looked around and smiled widely. "I've got no idea."

tbc

*Bela Lugosi, Dracula, 1931

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