Note: This was going to be another (distant) prequel to The Persistence of Memory, a glimpse into the history of Bertha von Grauberg, her reluctant allies Oksana and Yuliya, and her nemesis, the lich Irina Sazonova. Now it's just a glimpse into what could have been.
Not One Step Back!
"See him?"
Yuliya Krasnova crept forward, hugging the brick wall until she reached its end. Holding her rifle against her side, she leaned out just far enough to see around the corner of the gutted apartment block. "He's there," she reported. "Going in the same direction."
Oksana Zelenko followed her to the corner. "Good," she muttered. "Let's move."
Yuliya went first, her short figure melting out of one shadow and into the next. Alert eyes scanned both sides of the street, ears open for anything out of place. Her quarry wandered along without a care, as he'd been doing since they picked up his trail ten minutes earlier. Though she wasn't close enough to see the mark on the soldier's neck, Yuliya knew it was there. Only a suicidal man would expose himself like this... or one enthralled by a witch. If he wanted to die for his own reasons, there was no need to walk so far with a gun in his hand and grenades in his belt.
Yuliya glanced back at Oksana, whose hunched body carried the weight of a Degtyaryov machine gun and a can for spare magazines. The weapon was wrapped in a torn blanket, the can packed with rags to prevent rattling. As usual, the sun-bronzed blonde was too stubborn to share her load. She was a child of the Kharkiv workshops, whose strength had been her greatest pride even before she became a magical girl. Now she was a thousand kilometers from home and stronger than a grown man.
Oksana noticed the attention. "Problem?"
"No." Yuliya turned and moved after the oblivious German. There was a rifle shot to the east, answered by machine gun fire. Too far away to concern these young hunters.
On the face of it, this night was like many before. The pair set out from a friendly outpost at dusk, their magical dress concealed under helmets and cold weather clothing. Swiftness and silence bore them through the front lines and into the enemy's midst. It would be fine if witches only preyed on fascists, but they no more took sides than did the coming winter. If the monsters weren't kept in check, they would spread to the Volga's edge and threaten the Red Army's tenacious hold on the riverbank.
That wasn't what bothered Yuliya as she made her way between rubble heaps blanketed in snow, cradling her slender Tokarev semiautomatic. What did was that magical girl losses had suddenly spiked in the last few weeks: mostly disappearances, with bodies turning up here and there. The former could be explained as casualties of strong witches. The latter weren't so easily accounted for. The dead girls were found without wounds of any kind, and might have gone unnoticed if Captain Sazonova wasn't already investigating.
Yuliya trusted Sazonova but was reluctant to rely on her alone. She was, after all, only human. If there was to be a breakthrough in this case, Yuliya believed it must come from a fellow magical girl... And if there wasn't one, they might all be dead girls walking. Oksana knew it too, though she shrugged it off in her usual stoic way.
The possessed soldier veered off the street and into an alley. Yuliya lifted the rifle, snugging its hard steel buttplate against her shoulder. Wouldn't be long now.