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Authors: Sarah Jane Stratford

BOOK: The Midnight Guardian
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“Consider me tempted.”
The dining car was crowded. They had to squeeze in next to another man, who seemed undisturbed so long as he could continue his steak in peace. But he looked up when Kurt started talking about art again.
“The trouble with the Expressionists is they have no interest in beauty. There's no point in creating art if you're not going to create a thing of beauty. Don't you agree?”
Their dinner companion cut across Brigit to respond.
“It's been a problem with art for years. We're blessed in the Führer, he's clearing out all that degenerate rubbish. Foul stuff. I haven't wanted to take the wife to a museum in years. Who would?”
It transpired, much to Brigit's annoyance, that the man (“Herr Eberhard, and a very great pleasure”) had taken over a Berlin gallery and was looking to purchase in Paris. No longer Kurt's first object, Brigit was forced to play the part of the girl caught up in the important conversation of men. They ordered dinner and a bottle of wine, and Kurt smiled at her, a man who could hardly believe his luck.
Brigit's mind was working feverishly. It seemed certain the two men were on the same schedule, and the more they bonded, the more the hope of this meal was dashed. She ate her goulash mechanically, casting trial sniffs throughout the car for anything else likely, and wondering
how best to disentangle herself from this pretentious and insulting conversation.
That was when she saw him. The doctor, oozing a confident chill. He ate alone. Ostensibly, he was skimming a medical journal as he lingered over chops and coffee, but she felt his sharp little eyes rising to her.
He's trouble. Just what I need. More trouble.
A sudden heat swelled up inside her—the desire to rouse the demon in full and kill every man in the car. To eat no matter how much it would choke her and then go on and on and on until …
Exactly. Until what? You're stuck. You have a job to do. Concentrate on that. Never mind all this rubbish.
If only it were that easy. If only she weren't so alone.
“What do you think, Brigit?”
The interested smile had never left her face, but she had absolutely no idea what Kurt was asking.
“I think it's all simply too marvelous!”
Kurt beamed and turned to his other useful new friend with a triumphant air.
Through the corner of her eye, Brigit saw the doctor finish his coffee and exit the dining car. His eyes never left her, and hardly blinked.
Berlin. December 1938.
“At least we can still space our meals, to a point. That's something.”
Brigit nodded. Cleland was right, it was something. They had to hoard what few blessings there were and guard them carefully. Millennials could go nearly a week without food and still be perfectly sound, although ideally they fed well every four or five days. The band of five was discovering, however, that tension and pressure stoked the appetite. They were pleased to eat more Nazis, although nervous about too many disappearances being noticed. More troubling, however, was the flavor. Nazis were nearly indigestible. The taste of hate was hard to swallow.
But they could still space their meals.
Mors, of course, had the easiest time procuring a good uniform that fit him, but as Cleland pointed out, he'd had extraordinary luck.
“When a major from Freiburg decides to get stinking drunk and collapse alone in an alley on his first night in town, he's really just begging to be eaten, isn't he?”
So Mors was lucky, because no one had yet met the major, but the photograph on his identification card was harder to alter than expected. Thus far, he'd managed to avoid having to show it to anyone, but he wanted Swefred to hurry up and find a way to make the dead man look more like the undead man.
“You couldn't even try growing out some hair?” Swefred grumbled.
“Easier to erase his.”
This was true, although it was cumbersome. Swefred was interested in technical arts and had developed a fascination with photography. Which, of course, was useless with vampires, so he devoted himself to tweaking pictures and the results were often interesting. He was sure he could alter all the identity cards they were able to steal to look well enough like each of their own selves, it only required more time—time they weren't sure they had. Brigit and Meaghan had mingled their way into several parties, and from what little they could glean, determined that the Nazi machine was even more well oiled than the refugees had described.
Mors thought it was very inconsiderate of the major whom he was impersonating, this Werner, to be in such a restricted sphere as tank warfare. He didn't understand why it limited his prospects—surely he should still be invited to the better evening parties? How else did anyone expect to conduct real business?
At meetings, that was how, and during the day. Times had changed. Plans were not discussed over brandy and cigars at evening parties. Or at least, no plans to which any of them had yet been privy. Women in particular, it seemed, were not much trusted. Women who asked questions, even less so. Confidence would have to be earned, slowly.
 
A wealthy general was celebrating his daughter's engagement with a party so lavish, it was said he'd spent a Jew's fortune. Which, Brigit suspected, was literal. From what she knew of General Pfaff, he was one of the few truly stupid men in the party. The sort who'd risen to a position of power through a bit of luck and his wife's money. The sudden acquisition of a factory could only be due to the Jewish owner's hasty flight from Germany. Brigit took some comfort in the assumption that the general's utter lack of management skills would spell the end of that bit of fortune for him within a year.
In the meantime, he was currying favor with a choice guest list, which worked well for all the millennials. The males were going to scope out wives who looked bored and might be susceptible to delicate attentions, the females were looking for men who might be on the rise and open to the possibility of a mistress.
Brigit was glad the party was not a formal seated dinner. They could circulate with abandon and she could wear a cocktail dress, rather than a gown. That was one thing she really liked about this new century, as problematic as it had been. Fashions had changed to allow her to show off her magnificent legs. What with the curving high heels, the seamed stockings, and the silk dress that danced around her knees, she knew any man who ran his eye up one of those seams would follow it in his mind as high as it went.
The humans may be more ruthless than they were in 1914, but the clothes are better.
She carefully ran a bone comb through her silky curls and guided mascara over her lashes. As ever, she smiled to herself at the reaction a human woman would have to the prospect of grooming without a mirror. Indeed, grooming was one of the first things female, and even male, new ones fretted about, and yet it was so easy. The reassurance of beauty was all that was needed to keep one happy; liberation from the reflection was generally welcomed once accepted.
“When you can't see yourself, you begin to see yourself,” Otonia liked to say in her enigmatic way.
Mors preferred to be more blunt.
“I know I look fantastic, what more proof do I need?”
Brigit's human community had been tiny and rugged and no one there even knew what a mirror was. She had only ever seen herself in water before her making. It wasn't until Eamon had drawn her that she really came to know her own face. A curious sensation, seeing herself again after so many centuries. Blond, blue-eyed, curling pink lips and strong white teeth—of course she was a natural for this mission.
“Trust an ancient Briton to look like an ideal German fräulein,” Otonia laughed.
As a going-away gift, Eamon had drawn a new picture. The two of them together, tiny smiles playing around their lips, deep love in their eyes, even though they were gazing out rather than at each other. One might almost think there was something fascinating that was more worth their attention, but the way their eyelashes touched, their hair mingled, betrayed the real truth. When all was said and done, they were for each other only and always. Eamon drew his face from memory, a good memory for one
who hadn't seen that face in nearly 750 years. A beautiful face. More than beautiful—compelling, even mysterious. Brigit had memorized that face over centuries now, and still saw something new whenever she looked at it. She liked that.
They each took a different route to get to the general's house. When Brigit arrived, the only one of their group she spotted was Mors, who was chatting outside with two SS privates. They seemed to be manning the entrance to the party, which struck Brigit as at once extreme and laughable. They were not asking for identification, but they were consulting a guest list. To their credit, they looked abashed by the absurd duty. Trained to defend the Fatherland, and here they were acting like doormen at a first-night gala, with only an Alsatian to lend them an imposing air. Brigit wondered if they were being paid. She assumed Mors's Major Werner was on the list at least; he was distracting the men so the other four could enter unmolested. Or perhaps he was genuinely interested in the dog who, far from being ferocious, was lapping at Mors's hand as though the vampire had offered him bacon.
It was a curious thing, Mors's rapport with dogs. Part of his inimitable legend. The vampire mythology often had it that other creatures of the night, both real and imagined, ranged with the undead, but it wasn't true. For one, none of the imagined creatures existed, for another, foxes and owls and other such nocturnal beasts kept a respectful distance from the vampires. They had their own quarry to hunt, and their own path. They knew the undead for what they were. Besides which there was an unwritten contract: Beasts do not keep other beasts as pets. As ever, Mors was different.
He loved and respected dogs, and they him. His affection was for the unwanted mixed breed he could rescue either from a life of servitude or a painful death. Dogs thrived under his care, and lived many years longer than they should, ranging at his speed, loving the night. No one knew how he did it, surely he could not gift them power? Brigit had always wanted to ask, but kept her counsel.
Still, every twenty years or so, the dog would die. The vampires wondered how Mors could bear it, bonding so closely to creatures to whom he would, too soon, have to bid good-bye. His swaggering insouciance made some think it didn't touch him, but the love he showed his
pets was real, so whatever happened in him when one turned and took its final separate path was for him alone.
“Get in here!” Cleland's directive, echoing in her skull, roused Brigit from her reverie and she ambled up the steps, quite unnoticed.
Slipping into character, she hesitated at the door, looking around nervously as though for a female friend she was to meet. Her eyes accidentally met those of two young men ogling her appreciatively. She gulped hard and looked down, smoothing her skirt over her hips in a manner guaranteed to make them notice just how invitingly curvy those hips were. Turning from them, she feigned surprise at the smiling appearance of a square-faced colonel bearing two glasses of champagne.
“Good evening. I saw you standing here alone and without a drink and thought these two afflictions must be immediately remedied.”
“How kind of you! Thank you so much.”
“You sound like a Heidelberg girl.”
“Do I?” she answered, an artless girl playing at being mysterious.
Heidelberg, hm? Well, that's handy.
The Roma claimed that a vampire's mastery of many languages and fine arts was part of the evil magic of the demon. The tribunal was more of the opinion that once your mind was relieved of the minutiae and shackles of human life, it expanded to its full potential and allowed you, if you were so inclined, to dive headlong into education and erudition. There were vampires who were better read than the greatest human philosophers could ever hope to be, although the vampires were fully aware of their unfair advantage.
The millennials happily pressed that advantage, speaking flawless German in accents that did not betray their roots. The colonel was nattering on and on about his one day in Heidelberg and the hills and the castle and the beautiful countryside. Brigit sipped her champagne and wondered if he was the sort to let a girl get a word in edgewise.
“I'm a Bavaria man, myself. We're a hearty lot, love music.”
“Oh, so do I!”
“Do you play and sing?”
“No, neither. I just love to listen.”
“A perfect audience.”
He gave her a repugnant wink. A stout woman wearing something
that looked like an evening dirndl waddled up and slipped her arm through his, smiling beadily at Brigit.
“
Grüss Gott.
I am the colonel's wife. Have we met? You look unfamiliar.”
Good.
“I am Brigitte, madame, and pleased to meet you. Your husband was just saying how much he loved music.”
“Ah. Was he? How lovely.”
The colonel flushed, and Brigit enjoyed the seed of discord she'd planted. Even a colonel can't give his all to his country when he's trying to prove to his wife that he's as faithful as ever.
Brigit wondered, however, if perhaps she was wrong about these priorities when a general cleared his throat to get the colonel's attention. The general jerked his head toward a corridor and the colonel extracted his arm from his wife and barely looked at either unimportant woman as he marched after the general.
Left alone, there was nothing to say. The colonel's wife looked Brigit over, concentrating on her legs and breasts. Brigit smiled pleasantly, which made the woman shudder and, with a quick nod, a vestige of politesse, hurried back to the little clique of wives that Swefred and Cleland were attempting to amuse, with what Brigit noticed was only middling success. Thus far.
Helping herself to a canapé, Brigit stopped to be amused by a spotty boy, perhaps seventeen, who was being far too familiar with a bosomy waitress. The uncomfortable waitress bustled to Brigit's side and almost begged her for an order. The boy gave Brigit a supplicating look she couldn't understand—surely he knew she would side with a pestered female?
As she looked down her nose at him with haughty amusement, she caught a whiff of the stake in his modified crossbow. Nachtspeere. This almost-child following whatever direction his hot loins led was a Reich hunter. Brigit held his gaze longer, allowing him any opportunity for recognition. There was none, and she sensed he was carrying the stake out of nostalgia, because Berlin was clean. Furthermore, he was only in attendance as a courtesy to his fond supervisor. Brigit narrowed her eyes—the hunter's skin mottled under her pitiless sneer. He looked down and slunk away.
He does not know me. He has absolutely no sense of what I am.
The boy tried to save face by joining in conversation with Mors and two other men. After what looked like several unfortunate sentences that were wearing patience thin, Mors turned and caught her eye.
He knows none of us. They have not studied the legends, not to any use.
The pleasing knowledge that the British millennials were such total strangers to the Nachtspeere was only a small compensation for the sudden lack of valuable targets. Brigit wandered the dining and drawing rooms, sipping at her drink and giving halfhearted sniffs here and there, as though prowling for food. The corridor down which her colonel had disappeared was dark and tempting. She affected fascination with the unnecessarily graphic hunting prints lining the walls and studied each one with great care, clearly not noticing she was drifting farther and farther away from the allotted festivity space.

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