December 18, 1938
SS-Ahnenerbe research facility
Waischenfeld, Germany
“I sincerely apologize for the way you were treated. But your—‘kindred’ I believe is the term you use for each other—are rather difficult to restrain at times. I’m certain such an apology means nothing to you at the moment, but I hope you will believe me when I say that it is sincere. You would like a drink, I am sure. You must be thirsty after so long without blood.” The fancily-dressed man set a pair of bottles and two glasses on the simple table of the cell.
Jannie wished she could have stood when he entered the room. Or, if not that, she wished she could have sat up from her position lying against the cold cobblestone floor. Wished she could at least tilt her head to glare at him with her remaining eye. All she could manage was a slight crane in her neck that didn’t even bring the man’s feet into her sight. God, now she did want a drink. More than anything else in the world she wanted a drink. It had been…so long. But what she didn’t want to do was accept a drink from this human. He was far too familiar to her.
Unfortunately, what she wanted was overruled by what she needed. Jannie felt herself stir as she smelled what was in one of the bottles, and pathetically stretched a hand out towards it, almost against her will. With what seemed herculean effort, she pulled herself forward with the same arm to try and get closer to the wondrous smell. Pulled until the chain attached to the wall and the collar around her neck snapped tight and prevented any further progress.
“Oh dear, that is no good. Let me get that Countess.” The man stood and withdrew an old-fashioned iron key from a pocket and approached her. In the back of her mind, Jannie noted that everything since he’d entered had been deliberately engineered to humiliate her. The knowledge didn’t get rid of the feeling, however. She still felt humiliated, and even more so because she knew she was supposed to feel humiliated. As if to drive home the point, she heard herself whimper. Why, she didn’t quite know. She couldn’t sort out her own disjointed thoughts.
The man leaned in front of her to insert the key into the collar, and removed the lock that held the chain on. Moving more on instinct than conscious thought, fangs quickly extended themselves and Jannie used the last reservoirs of her strength to heave herself at him in an animalistic need. Before the man could react, she twisted her head and went for his neck. Much better than the old, bottled garbage he’d offered her, and much more fulfilling to her own sense of self-respect and pri—
An all-too familiar pain shot up her fangs and reverberated in her mind in mockery of her ill-considered action. The collar of the man’s shirt was lined with something, and in her nearly comatose state she couldn’t work her way around or through it before he pushed her head away.
“Now that was quite rude. And after I was courteous enough to unlatch you. Let us have no more of that.” The man stated, fixing Jannie with a hard stare and then contemptuously, and yet oddly gently, wrapping his arms underneath he knees and shoulders and picking her up. Jannie fumed at the additional shame as he marched her to the table in his arms. She didn’t even think of trying to bite at his exposed wrists or arms.
Jannie, feeling as if she were almost in a trance, struggled to keep her eye open and puzzled over the man’s actions as he deposited her in the room’s second chair. She didn’t know what else to do. She was just so thirsty and tired. Her thoughts were sluggish. She felt like she should be able to sort things out, but all she could focus on was the bottle on the table.
“I am Doctor Franz Grobba,” the man explained as he uncorked both bottles and poured a piteously small amount of wine into his glass and blood into one she hoped was for her. That was the only thing that made sense. Jannie had just opened her mouth to beg for more when Franz continued, “And I am experimenting with runes and monsters. Please, drink.”
Jannie knew the label ‘monsters’ was for her and wanted to object, but instead sat resignedly in the chair across from Franz staring at the glass. So that was what he was here for. He wanted information from her about runes. As if she would know anything about them. The man clearly had her confused with a mage for some reason. Trying to appear nonchalant, Jannie reached out and took the wine-glass of blood he had poured for her. The act died quickly as she drew it closer to her, however, and she drained the glass with one large swallow. She hated herself as she did for the overt display of her thirst and weakness, but could do nothing to stop it.
When she was finished she slapped the glass down on the table and stared over it at the doctor. It was then she realized she didn’t like him. He reminded her of everything she had never liked in the nobility. He displayed a self-assuredness she didn’t think was from any concrete accomplishment but because the way had been cleared of challenge for him. Undoubtedly it was the result of either direct patronage on the part of the Nazi party, or because other intellectuals who would challenge him had been silenced by that same party. The latter she could have accepted in principle, depending on the stupidity of the idea pushed, but the former was only excusable when applied to people of true talent otherwise passed over for recognition. Jannie did not think Doctor Franz Grobba had ever been passed over for recognition in his life. More likely he’d only gotten recognition for things he didn’t deserve. She was tired of seeing him so often, even if this was the first time she’d seen him.
“It is my theory that I may be able to restore sight, of a sort, to your other eye, if you would let me.” Jannie’s mouth dropped open and she winced at the reminder of the all-too fresh disfigurement. “Germania Lodge is skeptical, of course, and I won’t promise you anything at all. Especially not before we’ve gotten to actually attempt the process. It’s fascinating though, really. An interesting kind of syncretism between traditional runic magic and witchcraft and more forward-looking National Socialist ideals. We hypothesize that…” The man transformed before her eyes from a captor playing tricks on her to a professorial bookworm enraptured by his latest brainstorm doing the same thing.
For some reason, that almost made him more frightening. Jannie was stunned. She stared at the man with her one good eye, mind slowly stumbling through his words, many of which she didn’t recognize as he began to venture into details. She knew she had to look extraordinarily stupid, but for the first time in a long time she was too surprised to care how much of that emotion she let show. Not that she would’ve been in much shape to conceal it anyways.
Her mind finally began to catch up. Or, perhaps, for the first time since the door of her cell had opened, it began to actually work. Then she was able to realize the potential ‘volunteering’ might offer her. Stuck in her cell, chained to the wall, she was stuck. Perhaps, if she went along with the man’s idea, the change of pace would at least give her an opportunity to do something, anything, to try and escape her situation. The detached manner the doctor spoke of the experiment, and the cold chill Jannie didn’t know she could feel it sent up her spine, warred with that possibility of escape that dangled before her.
Franz had quit talking a while earlier and was looking at her, presumably waiting for an answer of some sort. As if of a mind of its own, Jannie’s eye darted from him to the bottle of blood before her. Would he take it away if she reached for it? Was she supposed to reach for it as a sign of acceptance? Was it drugged somehow? She hadn’t even bothered to sniff or examine what she’d drunk. She hadn’t even tasted it, and she still wanted more.
“There is no need to rush your decision. Would you like some more, Countess?” Franz asked, as if reading her mind. It probably wasn’t too hard with how obvious she was being. God, how pathetic. How infuriating.
Jannie wanted to tell him to get out. She wanted to use the tiny, almost imperceptible, amount of strength he’d provided her in the single small glass to force him out. She was fed up with his games and incessant talk. She wanted to make some sort of principled stand.
What she did instead was meekly nod and say, “Yes please, doctor.”
“Don’t be shy then fraulein. Drink.” Franz reached an arm forward, but in his haste knocked the bottle of blood over. It clattered onto its side, quickly spilling its contents off the edge of the small table onto the floor. As the cruelest of jokes, the blood quickly disappeared into the cracks between the stones when it hit.
Jannie couldn’t contain the tortured, wordless cry of despair that escaped her, and practically dived off her chair to take up a position on her knees underneath the stream of falling fluid. It was only after she’d done so and taken the first swallow, and felt the bit she’d missed running down her neck, that she was even conscious of what she’d done. It took still another swallow for her to feel any sense of shame over the act and realize how utterly barbaric it was. Even with the realization, however, she couldn’t draw herself away from the falling stream or quit drinking.
She tried to force her mouth away. To end the humiliating scene before it could go on too long. Or at least, she thought she tried. But she was so thirsty, and it tasted so good after so long without. Jannie reached one hand out to the leg of the table, and this time tried to physically pull herself away. But her strength seemed to abandon her the moment she began to pull as something familiar but thirsty, twisted and dark in the depths of her mind held her in place. She was so thirsty. In much the same way it had forced her to try and bite the doctor earlier, instinct kept her from moving. However, it was aided by…something else.
In the end, Jannie abandoned the attempt to move and let her arm drop limply back to her side. It wasn’t so bad really. Embarrassing undoubtedly, but she needed strength more than she needed to keep her self-image intact. After all, she wouldn’t be in any condition to even try and escape if she wasted what little sustenance she was given. She was thirsty and right now had the chance to drink. That overrode any other concerns for the moment.
“I apologize Countess, I still, unfortunately, have much of the bumbling professor about me. Always dropping things and bumping into them.” Franz said softly as he picked up the bottle. Jannie tried to restrain herself but still found she could not, and slowly followed the still-dropping stream of blood back up until reaching the table itself. She did manage to keep from dragging her tongue along the small puddle on the tabletop, a restraint that made her inordinately, and illogically, proud with herself. With a last look at the small circle of fluid, she slammed back into her chair. Trying not to think about what she’d just done, she covered her dripping mouth and chin with the back of a hand and focused on doctor Grobba.
“Madam.” he said simply, holding out a handkerchief. Jannie could think of no man she had ever wanted to kill more at any moment in her long life. Instead of doing what she wanted, she ripped the cloth square from his hands and cleared her face with it. So much for her own self-respect and pride. The worst part was she would probably do the exact same thing again if it was repeated. She was still thirsty. Before the man had entered, she’d just been so gone as to not even be able to notice it, or care about it.
“Do you have any questions, My Lady?” Jannie felt a shiver of aggravation at the way the man-cattle used the formal words. He said them, but she could tell he didn’t mean them. Either because she was a ‘monster’ to him, or because he was one of the brand of fiery Nazis who disparaged noble title in general, the words were just a convenient formality for him. They were a way for him to exploit her subtly by way of politeness and she recognized it. “Me and my associates will do our utmost to answer any concerns you might have right now, or in the future. Whether you decide to go through with our proposal or not. But, you should.”
Franz shrugged as he finally took a small sip from his own wine glass. “I wish I could do something to fully undo your kindreds’ poor treatment of you, but alas our scientists have not yet found a way around the barrier of time.” He explained, in the same overly placating tone as he’d spoken the ‘my lady’ with. Jannie could detect the self-interest of the man, but it seemed to be balanced out by a rivalry with his vampire countrymen. He also presented the best chance she had of escaping from her current situation. It would do her no good to go back to lying semi-comatose against the floor, barely able to think.
Or was that just her own desire for more food leading her to the decision that got her what her body wanted? Jannie was disgusted with how unsure she was of her own decision-making ability.
“If I may ask, why do you need me?” Jannie asked slowly, placing her hands in her lap even as her eye strayed back to the bottle again. He’d won this meeting. But she wouldn’t let him win in the long-run. Of course, how she’d prevent that she didn’t know at the moment.
Franz’s smile grew after a second’s hesitation. “Well, we don’t need you specifically. We wanted a vampire as our first full-scale test subje—partner,” Franz offered Jannie an apologetic eye at his own slip, “As we figured you would be more resilient, particularly if supplied with plenty of blood, to the demands of the operation. Me and my associates chose you in particular as an additional way of apologizing. I was sincere when I said I was sorry for your treatment, My Lady. Some of the vampires in service of the Reich are not the most…level-headed as they could be, and your kind’s old feuds are, regrettably, still present to some degree in our ranks. I realize my words are of little benefit though to one who has been wronged as you have, which is why we thought offering the chance of correcting your disfigurement, in the small manner we might be able to, would demonstrate our sincerity more effectively.”
Jannie wasn’t sure how much of the man’s words to believe, if any. She could detect the hint of some kind of opposition between him, his ‘associates’ and the vampires who’d captured her in them, but she wasn’t certain where it came from. Then there was the possibility it was all an act. She’d thought she was good at reading humans, but the combination of her own near-starvation and the doctor’s seeming, but periodically slipping, sincerity threw her assessment off.
“What would I need to do?” Jannie heard herself say, hoping it was the right decision. Perhaps it was weak of her, but if she could just get more to drink perhaps she’d be able to do something besides slowly cough dust out of her body until she disintegrated from desanguination. At the moment, that seemed like the only other option.
Franz beamed and drained his wine-glass in an uncultured display of celebration. “For now? Nothing, my lady.” Again, spoken with that obvious insincerity, “In a short while, however, we can have you moved out of this dreadful cell at the least. Please, excuse me and I’ll begin the process. Always paperwork to file, you know?”
Franz rose and began to go for the door.
Jannie heard him muttering something under his breath. Perhaps if she’d thought such a thing was coming, or if she were more attentive to begin with, she could have resisted the effects. Perhaps, had she not been drugged and half-hypnotized, she could have even interrupted the spell before it was finished. As it was, the mutterings were her only warning of the freight train headache of exhaustion that crashed through her head a mere moment before she passed out.
*********************
“Oh come on, Franz. You saw the subject in there. This is, what, the eleventh time today it dived onto the floor to lap up spilling blood just because you suggested to it to be thirsty? That vampire is gorging herself on blood just because you say it hasn’t had any! The vampire equivalent of eating out of our hands!”
Franz shook his head, “Yes, at the moment. But you’ll notice without redosing her she was already showing complications and degeneration. She couldn’t think of a single question in our first seven sessions, then she asked what she needed to do in the next three, and this time she was actively questioning why we were asking her. That is indicative of a lot more cognitive function going on in the background than you anticipated. Your drug is still wearing off quickly instead of invoking more permanent mental change. I can’t quantify the rest, but if you’d been in that room you’d have felt the difference between this last time and the others. After she drank her glass I was scared, Reinhard. That’s why I went off-script with all that talk of the process involved in the sight-experiment, and threw in as many long words as I could. Dammit, if I hadn’t confused her there I think she would’ve attacked me!”
Reinhard sighed, but nodded. “I know, I’m just optimistic, I guess. You know my opinion, I still think the drug needs some reworking for long-term sustainment in a subject’s host body so we don’t need to reinject them with it. Doubly so in her case, since I have no idea about it’s cross-species applicability even if it does work in humans. But, I don’t like depending on your weird Freudian stuff in general. I am the chemist of this operation. You’re the people-person. What’s your call mein fuhrer?”
Franz chuckled very lightly, “We’ll move on to actually doing the eye. Well, trying to do the eye. Hopefully that works better than either of our experiments have so far. We could probably make the drug better, but I think the major block right now is coming from her mentality and lack of trust. We’re getting our best results when we set ourselves up as opposed to the vampires who hurt her before, that makes her much more compliant with our requests. I think if we demonstrate our sincerity by fixing her eye, we’ll have much better results. It’s worth a try, at least. Plus, it means we’ll finally get that damned bureaucrat off our backs.”
It also meant he would be able to keep his word to the vampire Countess, and more importantly stop the cruelly repetitive and manipulative ‘experimentation’ they were carrying out on her. Granted, it would replace it with another form, but perhaps he could do something about that. Franz did not mention those reasons, though. Instead, he kept them locked deep within the confines of his own mind where even the SS did not yet have a means of discovering them.
For not the first time since he’d attained what he’d thought of once as a prestigious position in the Ahnenerbe, Franz Grobba wished he’d never joined. It had seemed an easy decision once, when it had meant a broad dissemination of his writings and research for the low price of abandoning some of the more rigid academic, or moral, standards of his peers. Back when his racism had been more intellectual position than applied science, he’d seen nothing to object to in it.
Now that he did, though, he was stuck in his position. Both because suddenly resigning from where he was would likely invite scrutiny that was dangerously likely to result in problems for him, and because where he was at least gave him a very slight capability to…limit the damage.
Which left the question of how he could limit the damage his work would do now. How he could make sure his research was abandoned or discarded. It would be nice if he could devise a way to taint Reinhard’s serum as well, but he had a suspicion that it was too late for that. His own eye proposal was much more novel and much less scientific. The problem came in how he could discredit it and ensure the Countess’ escape. He could think of easy ways to do either one alone. But if he could do both, it would at least imply there were problems with the serum as well. Perhaps it would not be enough to stop its development, but perhaps such a setback could slow its development. But how could he do it?
He would just have to do his best. Hopefully, his best would get him past the tightrope he was walking atop alive. He didn’t hold a great deal of hope though. He knew his own ‘best’ was, contrary to the numerous accolades and praises heaped upon him, much less good than others thought. Still, he had to do what he could. Hopefully he would even survive to fully discredit his own ideas.
*********************
Jannie was confused as they led her out of her cell. The cell she now seemed to remember having the same conversation, with minor variations, over and over again inside. A conversation that she recalled often ended with the promise of being moved from the cell. It was an odd memory, distant and very clouded. She felt as if it had all happened in a dream, or to someone else entirely. She didn’t even much enjoy thinking about it. It felt too foreign.
“Ah, Countess. Good to see you. If you would follow me, we’ll begin.” There he was. Him again, waving aside the black-uniformed guards that had been with her. Jannie felt a familiar aggravation, and a deep portion of her mind, below even her conscious realization, screamed at her to kill the man apparently responsible for her confusion. Consciously, she merely followed him.
Franz Grobba lead her, unguarded, out of the building and across a street into a building she assumed was a hospital. She noted it was nighttime during the brief crossing. It was the first reference point for time, excepting ‘mealtimes’ when she’d been given a slight amount of blood, she’d gotten since she remembered being brought to the small hamlet by the SS vampires who’d captured her. She couldn’t contain a soft smile that spread across her scarred face at the quiet peacefulness of the dark as she followed Grobba. She’d always enjoyed spending nights like these outdoors. Be it as a few bats, tossing through the night on bony wings, or floating as a mist. There was little as pleasant as basking in moonlight as a small cloud of mist.
Instead of doing any such thing, however, Jannie followed Grobba into the hospital. She followed up a set of stairs and down a hallway, and finally into one of the rooms. It was flanked by a new pair of black-uniformed guardsmen, who followed her and the German doctor into the room after her. She had a faint sense of having done something wrong, but couldn’t place what it was.
“My lady, before we begin, and since we have some time until my witch associate arrives, share one last drink with me.” Grobba said, gesturing to a pair of bottles in the window-sill of the room. Jannie was once again struck by that disturbing familiarity, and her smile disappeared. She was tempted, perhaps even wanted to refuse, but then nodded. More blood could only be beneficial for her, after all. At some point it’d come in handy when she had a chance to escape.
“My lady, you are a scholar of Germanic lore are you not?” Franz asked over his shoulder as he poured the glasses. He spilled a good deal pouring his own wine, and took an uncultured drink from the bottle itself after finishing. He then filled Jannie’s glass almost to the brim with blood.
“I read.” Jannie said simply, taking the glass when Franz offered it. The confusion, which had abated somewhat, was returning.
“I’m having trouble remembering one of the stanzas of the Poetic Edda that seems somewhat appropriate to our situation. It starts out ‘I know where Othin’s eye is hidden, deep in the wide-famed well of Mimir’, but I don’t recall the rest…” Franz trailed off with a shrug and took a large gulp of his wine.
Jannie thought for a moment, digging through her memory. The Edda wasn’t something she’d ever overly concerned herself with, but the stanza he was referring to was one of the more famous from it. Jannie took a small drink from her glass, which quickly turned into a much longer one as she tasted the difference in it. The hint of wildness and euphoria within it that she could almost feel slowly begin to chase out the cobwebs in her head. It was weak, perhaps diluted in mundane blood, but there was werewolf blood in the glass Franz had given her.
Jannie lowered the glass. He had to have known. “It finishes ‘Mead from the pledge of Othin each morn does Mimir drink, would you know yet more’.” She said, mind racing. Everything she’d been confused about had been happening. She wasn’t crazy. More than that, however, there seemed to be something entirely different going on now. Something her captor, the man she wanted to kill and yet was now looking for direction from, was involved in.
Franz shrugged, “That is it, I always loved that stanza. Sacrifice for the best cause.” He raised his glass, “To honorable Germans making similar such sacrifices.”
The ‘experiment’ began a few minutes later, just as Jannie finally began to once again feel like herself. She wished she could have been as confused and scattered as she had been before it started, instead of in increasing control and awareness of her own faculties. She spent what little time she could in thought trying to work out Franz’s intentions, and desperately trying to ignore what they were doing to her useless eye. Something she didn’t manage as well as she wished when the rune-headed brand came out. She didn’t think she’d screamed in pain and fear for more than a century. She more than made up for it.
It ended eventually. She’d assumed it had to, but had questioned that assumption a number of times during the procedure as it seemed to go on forever. She was assisted up, and for the first time in months as she staggered slightly on her feet, she knew she was actually wholly and completely present. Franz’s werewolf-laced blood, as well as the copious quantities she’d ingested during the procedure itself, seemed to have done more than merely keep her body healthy. It had cleared her mind.
Franz shouldered his way past the witch who’d been overseeing much of the more intense portions of things, and leaned in towards her face. “May I see your eye?” He asked, and Jannie noticed for the first time how much his previous speech had been laced with thinly-veiled orders and suggestions. None of which were present here.
Jannie very slowly opened her right eye anyways, and was immediately struck by how she could actually see out of it. Unable to restrain it, she gasped in pleasure. It wasn’t anything close to real sight, and she knew she should be disappointed. Everything that wasn’t a person in view of her right eye was blurred and wrapped in shadow so thick it overpowered virtually all of the actual color of the world. The occupants of the room, however, seemed to almost glow against the shadowy background. Various shades of blue danced on the skin of everyone present, including herself. It was a surreal, otherworldly look that she knew would quickly become headache-inducing. But it was still better than the complete absence of vision she’d had before.
“What do you see, my lady?”
Jannie had to open her mouth two or three times before she could form the words, even when they came out it was with a breathless near-amazement. “You are all…blue. You are glowing blue.”
Franz leaned closer, so much that Jannie grew distinctly uncomfortable, and poked and prodded at the area around her right eye. Still sore, Jannie squeezed the eye closed under his ministrations. His whisper, when it came, was so low even she had trouble hearing it. “Do not point out the one that looks different when we have you look at them. Then as quickly as you can escape with the one who does. I’ll handle the rest.”
Jannie now didn’t feel that strange compulsion to obey the statements made by the man, and was somewhat tempted to do whatever she wished, up to and including feeding on the doctor, just out of spite. But she pushed the temptation aside. He seemed to have helped her for some reason, she wasn’t going to pay that back in so uncivilized a way. Not until she knew the situation better. Besides, he had the wholly confident voice of a man who’d already thought things through, and she was walking into things completely unprepared.
“Bring in the testers.” Franz said flatly as he finally leaned back from Jannie’s face. The door of the room opened almost before Franz had finished speaking, and a trio of broken men were scooted into the room by another guard. They all looked thoroughly hopeless, heads downcast and feet barely rising with each step.
“Countess, if you could look at these men and then tell us what you see?”
Jannie fought her expression to be sure it revealed nothing of what she thought, and opened her right eye again. The surreal vision returned to her, and this time she shut her left eye to at least stop the jumbling confusion created where the two different eye-sights overlapped. With that done, she turned the black, odal rune branded eye to the men who’d been pushed in.
Like Franz, the witch who’d overseen the operation, and the guards, two of the men danced with thin blue auras that she couldn’t explain. But the third man was different, and didn’t display the blue-tinged shading of the others in the room. It was a peculiarity she was hard-pressed not to visibly take note of no matter how carefully she controlled her reaction.
But Jannie had more than a century and a half of experience in self-control. Unburdened by whatever head-strangeness had invited her numb almost-total compliance with her captors over the past weeks, she passed over him with her eye as if he were no different from any other. Jannie sidelined her own complete confusion over the presence, and absence, of the color as best she could.
“Countess?” Franz prodded, taking a step back to put him directly against the wall and holding his hand out at the three men.
“I do not know what to say. All I can see is—“ Jannie began, only to cut off as she jerked forward and slammed her hand around and into the neck of the witch. The woman collapsed, gasping for air and bringing hands to her throat as she gasped for air. Ignoring her even as she began to fall, Jannie leapt at the nearby pair of guards, leaving the single additional one on the other end of the room who’d brought the ‘testers’ in for later.
For their part, the guards were by no means idle. They were moving into action by the time the witch was on the floor, drawing their sidearms and moving into more appropriate fighting stances of their own. But they were well-acquainted with Jannie, and they knew she was no threat. Knew she was guarded only as a formality, not because she posed a danger. But now she did, and they were forced to reverse their assessment of her in the same moments they tried to stop her.
They weren’t successful.
Jannie wrapped her right arm around the chest of the closer of the two guards while still diving through the air. She let momentum carry her for a moment and slide her around the man’s waist slightly, and then clutched his uniform and chest as tightly as she could. Jannie landed, and in almost the same instant wrenched as hard as she could. The man spun across the short distance between him and the window and crashed through it with a startled scream.
The second guard had his pistol out when Jannie got her hands on him. It was little help at that point, however. Jannie bit the man as she spun him around to stand between herself and the last remaining guard, as the pistol clattered to the ground out of his now-broken arm. The other fully healthy guard had, ironically enough, a similar idea.
The guard held the man who hadn’t had the blue aura in front of him, Luger to the man’s head. As Jannie took a drink and evoked a pained scream of fright out of her hostage, the last guard pressed the barrel of his pistol harder against his hostage’s temple, drawing out a similar scream. Were the man open to considering the matter, he might have found the identical reaction the two men had to their common situations an interesting subject of reflection. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. Jannie didn’t really care.
The guard scowled “Let Stefan go, or he dies!”
Jannie would have almost been slightly amused at the words if not for the deadliness of things. Taking her fangs out of the man’s neck, Jannie stared at the man she had been forced into a standoff with. “Let him go, or Stefan dies.”
Jannie sunk her teeth slowly back into Stafan, keeping her eyes on the last guard as she did so, and was pleased when he didn’t immediately fire. She had the advantage. The man clearly cared if Stefan made it, while she had no personal connection to the man he was holding. While she didn’t want to see him die, she could exploit that feeling to trade prisoners with the guard. After that, she could burst into a mist and dispatch them both without any—
Doctor Grobba slammed something into the side of the guards’ neck. The guard screamed, and it promptly turned into a blood-choked gurgle. His pistol barked. His hostage died.
Grobba fell into hysterics.
Jannie looked on in the instant all of it happened, and was utterly incapable of doing anything. Snorting with anger, she jerked her fangs free of Stefan’s neck without retracting them and shoved the man to the floor as arterial blood began to pour from his ruptured veins. She didn’t like doing that. It was wasteful and cruel.
Stalking over to Grobba, now on his hands and knees beside the dead hostage, Jannie awkwardly stood in place as the doctor very slowly got a handle on himself. It involved a lot of inappropriate, blasphemous and uncultured words that, in other circumstances, would have invited her criticism. But in this one, Jannie was silent. When the doctor finally spoke, it was obvious he wasn’t anywhere close to recovered. In fact, his voice held a bone-deep sadness Jannie hadn’t expected to hear in a man in his position.
“Run. This will work just as well. Maybe better.”
Unsure what to say, unsure if anything she said could even help, Jannie turned back to the window. With a final, one-eyed glance at the shaking doctor, she dissolved into bats and stormed through the broken window and into the freedom of the night.
***************
December 23, 1938
“So it is your opinion this line of research was fundamentally unsound?”
Franz Groppa nodded, adding in a slight wince at the still-problematic ‘concussion’ he’d received in the horrible tragedy in the operating room the week before. “Yes sir. It is—that is—perhaps I should have considered it sooner but I just…”
Franz stopped himself and took a theatrical breath. He was, at least in a loose sense of the word, an academic and not a fighter. He didn’t have to fake the panic that welled up in him when he thought of the events of that evening, he merely had to direct it into more appropriate channels than speaking the truth.
“Yes sir. You’ll have my full report by the end of the week, but I don’t think this was a fluke. Rechecking our research in the Lodge library, we stumbled upon the source of what we think resulted in the disaster. It seems that some aspects of our work, or more precisely of Germania Lodge’s library we drew our work from, were actually based, at their very root centuries ago, in kabbalah magics.” It was a rather ridiculous assertion, Franz knew. His lie depended almost entirely on the bias he could build against his research. How much he could taint it with the brush of Semitism. Thankfully, his audience was more than willing to listen.
“What? How could that happen? How could you not realize this?”
Franz sighed, “Because the source material didn’t realize it either, sir. Or at least, didn’t admit to it. It attributed what we did to ‘mere’ witchcraft. Which was a close enough cognate in this instance to carry through the procedure, but wasn’t enough to produce any results. The vampire did not see anything out of her eye when she opened it. We think that though that aspect of the magic failed, if it was even actually possible to begin with, it still was powerful enough to somehow open the subject’s mind up to manipulation by Semite wishes, in much the same way they control their golems. Which is why, I believe, once the Jew was killed by Unterscharfuehrer Mueller in his courageous final moments—” Franz was surprised at how easily he made it through that statement, he’d had to practice it to restrain his gorge, “—The vampire quickly abandoned the scene and…spared me instead of mimicking what she’d done to Mueller, the other guards, or Miss Leiz.”
Franz let the guilt enter his voice then, though it wasn’t the result of what his listener would assume it was. Survivor’s guilt had nothing to do with him. Here he was, using the Jew’s—the man’s—death as some kind of lever to get what he wanted. Even if what he wanted was a good thing, it made him feel…dirty. Even if it meant saving many more, it couldn’t help that man, and he’d never offered himself to be involved in such an undertaking.
Perhaps worse than that, Franz didn’t even know the man’s name. He would likely never know it. If he ever made inquiries, it would probably raise questions he couldn’t afford to have asked. He wasn’t supposed to care, and so, to protect the lie he was wrapping this whole event in, he couldn’t care.
“With such in mind, it’s my firm belief that all research or experimentation sharing the starting point of my ‘blood identification’ theories needs to be stopped until such a time as I can reopen it without Semitic traditions fouling the waters.” Franz said the words with the necessary graveness, allowing a brief sliver of duty to enter it as he spoke of reopening. It would look better if he appeared to labor fruitlessly at the topic for an extended period of time.
“All of it?” the man behind the desk asked, raising an eyebrow.
Franz hesitated a brief instant, as if reluctant to give up everything, and nodded.
“You realize what this will probably do to your reputation?” This was spoken very softly, very frighteningly.
Franz nodded and said perhaps his first sincere words of the conversation, “Sir, my reputation can be damned.” Then, it was time to lie again, “This time it was a witch and three loyal servants of the Reich, but if we continue this research and experience the same problem, which we will of that much I am certain, it could pose even worse consequences next time. This was supposed to assist in creating an effective police for the SS and the Reich who could spot true Aryans by sight alone. If those people were all subject to influence by Jews themselves because of the process we put them through…”
Franz trailed off and threw in a very small shudder to demonstrate his point. The man rested both index fingers against his chin for a moment, and nodded.
“I see your point, doctor. In fact, I think I even agree with it.”
Franz felt as if he could have flown.
Coming out from behind his desk, the man wandered to his window to look out at the streets of Berlin. “Take your time with the report, doctor Grobba. For the moment, we’ll put a hold on everything that depends on your research until we can all make a more informed judgement on the matter. But please, for the moment, go and get yourself some more rest. Organize your thoughts. Spend some time with your family. I do not expect you to return to pursuits of the mind while still injured.”
Franz nodded gravely and came to a civilian and somewhat sloppy rendition of attention. Himmler didn’t fault one for being an academic, but he did fault those who failed to show the proper loyalty. With all the enthusiasm he could muster, Franz shot his arm out and barked the necessary words. Himmler turned and returned the gesture, before smiling in farewell to Franz and sitting back down to attend to some kind of paperwork or another.
Franz didn’t stop shaking for days.