Wasn’t it?
Yael gathered her knees to her chest, and as she stared into the flame, as the tears blurred its light all across her eyes, she decided that it was.
It had to be.
Question: How long can one candle burn?
Answer: Until it has nothing left to give.
Aaron-Klaus’s candle burned for twenty-six hours. The flame was already dying—shrinking into a sickly fringe of blue—when Reiniger stormed into the headquarters. The leader of the resistance slammed the door shut with such force it created a gust. The wind rolled through the beer hall basement, licking the edges of Henryka’s stacked files.
The candle’s light vanished. Smoke rose, wraith tendrils reaching up to the paper airplanes she and Aaron-Klaus had made together. Yael was the only one in the room to see it. Everyone else—Henryka and the other Germania-based operatives—watched the National Socialist general, breath held, waiting for a verdict.
“He’s alive,” Reiniger said. “The Saukerl survived.”
No one said a word. Yael kept her eyes on the smoke, watching it rise. Fading until not even a haze was left. She knew he wasn’t talking about Aaron-Klaus.
As soon as the news that the Führer was not dead reached the public, the television sprang back to life. Its pixels blaring, brighter than ever. Adolf Hitler—in what the Reichssender was calling a miracle—had survived the three bullets Aaron-Klaus lodged in his chest. Assassination attempt number forty-nine.
Question: How many times can one Führer live?
Question: How many times can one not-assassin die?
Answer: As many times as the Reichssender chooses to air it.
They showed the clip again and again and again and again. All four shots.
Survival immortalized.
Another useless death.
PART II
THE WILDERNESS
CHAPTER 13
Walking was not Luka Löwe’s ideal mode of transportation. It was slow, with a poor energy-expended-to-distance-actually-covered ratio. His biking boots were starting to eat into his heels with every step. He was fairly certain that if he took them off, he’d find blisters with the size and relative explosiveness of Mount Vesuvius.
But he hadn’t had a chance to remove his boots. His initial landing had been not so graceful, into tangled pine limbs. It had taken Luka the better part of a half hour to get out of the harness and navigate his way to the ground without breaking both legs. By that time, Yael was calling for him. It was like a game of Blinde Kuh: dark, yell, dark, yell, until the fräulein came bursting out of the forest with a very queasy-looking Felix in tow.
“Let’s move,” she’d said, her arm tightened over a refolded parachute. “We shouldn’t linger, in case anyone saw us land.”
Being seen was a possibility Luka was very much beginning to doubt. There was no sign of other human eyes, much less civilization. They’d been walking for hours, through winter-snow leftovers, past pine trunks, fir trunks, ash trunks, endless rows and rows of trunks.
Yael, at least, seemed to know where she was going. Her appearance hadn’t changed since the ballroom—hair still white, eyes electric bright—which only added to the quicksilver feel of her movement. Equal parts flowing and lethal. She took them south and east, into a heavy-cloud sunrise. They halted a few times by ice-riddled streams, taking long, stinging gulps of water. Yael snapped a few branches off a nearby pine, plucking their needles like chicken feathers and handing them to each boy.
“Chew on these,” she told them. “It’ll help stave off the hunger until we find a place to camp.”
Luka popped the needles into his mouth. “Tastes like Christmas.”
They kept hiking as the morning gave way to noon. Down hills, up hills, until Luka was just as sick of inclines as he was of trees. His blisters ballooned inside his boots until he felt one of them pop, oozing through his socks. His collarbone kept charring with heat—as if an invisible SS-Standartenführer walked alongside, perpetually jamming a cigarette against skin.
What Luka wouldn’t give for a nice long drag of smoke. He’d been too shocked to take advantage of the one Baasch jammed between his lips. It tumbled out in seconds—dashing ash and burning a shallow hole in the dance floor before the SS-Sturmmann stamped it out. What a waste…
While Luka was wishing, he’d take a Zündapp, too. Not that a motorcycle would’ve done much good out here. Wherever here happened to be…
“Does anyone know where we are?” he asked.
Felix shrugged. He hadn’t uttered a word since the plane. His pace had been stalwart, but in the past hour or so, Luka had noticed the boy’s steps slowing.
Yael looked over her shoulder at the pair. Her nose was definitely the worse for wear; the thick red line over its broken bridge matched the signet-ring cut on her cheekbone. The rest of her face was a puffy, bruised mess.
“Somewhere in the Muscovy territories,” she said.
The Muscovy territories. Former Soviet stomping grounds. No wonder it was so verdammt cold. Luka’s father had spent many postwar years ranting about the place—tales of frigid foxhole nights and frozen motorcycle fuel.
“We’re somewhere in the taiga,” Yael went on, walking and talking, “and with this kind of forest and wildlife, I’d wager we’re not far from the Urals.”
“The Urals?” Felix’s face went sharp. “But—that’s days away from Germania.”
“Longer by foot,” Yael said.
“Is being days away from the people who want to lop off our heads not a good thing?” Luka asked.
But the mechanic was back to his sullen silence. His airplane blanket flapped behind him, going capelike when Felix stumbled on a root. He threw up his good hand to steady himself. The right one stayed tucked out of sight, under his stained shirt.
“We’re much better off here,” Luka told him. “Muscovy territories. Land of endless edible pines and… what kind of wildlife did you see again, Fräulein?”
“I saw a sable earlier. And those”—she nodded at a nearby patch of snow, its flakes gray with dirt, crushed in an odd assortment of places—“are wolf tracks.”
“WOLVES?”
“We are in the wild,” Yael reminded him.
“And we probably smell like a gottverdammt butcher shop.” Luka glanced at the fräulein’s bloody face, Herr Wolfe’s bloodier shirt. Maybe they weren’t better off here.… “We’re a feast on six legs.”
Yael stepped directly into the snow patch, her own slender footprint stamping out the wolf paw. “They should be too scared of people to come forward.”
“And if they’re not?” Luka asked.
“We should keep going. Find a good place to camp before dark,” she said.
So they kept going. Their afternoon view didn’t change much. Trees, trees, snow, more wolf prints (now that Yael had pointed the first set out, Luka saw them everywhere), trees, trees, a frozen brook, trees. And finally, a road! When Luka first caught sight of it, he thought he might be hallucinating. The track looked feral, covered in frozen mud puddles and the carcasses of long-dead weeds. But Yael saw it, too. She knelt down by the mud, examining it.
“It has to lead somewhere.” Luka moved up behind her. (But not too close. He’d seen her reflexes in action and wanted his solar plexus/nose/testicles to remain intact.) “Right?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Yael frowned. “We’re back in Reich territory now. It’s not just wolves we have to worry about.”
Right. Luka wondered if the WANTED posters had gone to press yet. They’d likely use Felix’s Axis Tour entry photo. For Luka, they could use one of the old propaganda posters from his 1953 victory with the Sieg heil text at the bottom blotted out. He imagined Yael’s picture as a big question mark.
They were a feast on six legs, heads topped with a price.
“Look, as much as I enjoy pine needles, we need actual food,” Luka said. “Food and medicine and beds and not getting eaten by wolves. Following this path is o
ur best chance of obtaining those things.”
Yael nodded, but her frown stayed. The expression looked downright vicious on her blood-blushed face. “We’ll walk along the road. Not on it. If we come across somebody, we’re in no shape to run, much less fight.”
They walked for more hours in stumbling silence, too tired, too aching to talk. Felix’s steps grew slower and slower, winding down to a collapsing stop. Knees into the earth, face and chest flat against the crusted, wolf-pawed snow. Even though the air was freezing, there was sweat on his forehead, plastering his fair hair to his face.
He fell with such a solid stillness that Luka wondered if the boy had just up and died. But when Yael rushed over to the mechanic, he started spluttering, pushing feebly against the ground with his good hand. “No. K-keep going. Have to s-save…”
His voice wilted off into a cough.
“He has a fever.” Yael turned Felix onto his back, tugged the boy’s injured hand out from under his shirt. “The fingers are becoming infected.”
So they were. Even the boy’s uncrushed fingers were puffy and red, flesh inflated to the size of small bratwurst. Now that Luka was closer, he could identify a smell. It made his empty stomach churn.
Adele’s brother would not be taking any more steps, which meant they wouldn’t either.
“So this is camp.” Luka glanced around. Somber pines surrounded by a thick carpet of fallen needles. A bad place to hole up if you wanted shelter from the arctic winds ripping between the trees. An even worse place if you wanted to avoid getting eaten by wolves.
Yael dropped the parachute she’d been carrying and began fraying one of its cords against the edge of a nearby rock. “I’m going to set some snares. See what other food I can find. Stay here and keep an eye on Felix. Try to get a fire started. When I get back, we’ll rig the parachute into a tent.”
It took Luka a grand total of ten minutes to collect wood and stack it for a fire, following vague instructions from his Hitler Youth days: kindling first, small sticks next, larger logs on top, leave plenty of room for air. His jacket was still damp from his dip in the moat (well over a day later, but such was the stubbornness of leather). This hadn’t bothered Luka much while they were walking, but as evening temperatures began to plummet, he realized he needed to get the fire started. Fast.
He grabbed two sticks, started rubbing them together.
Felix’s skin was marbling—flushed and paling. The mechanic shivered beneath the parachute and extra blankets Yael had draped over him. His lips moved in a frantic mutter: “Jumped too soon. Keep going. We have to keep going. Führer’s gonna kill… s’all. N-not, not safe.”
They were ranting, feverish words.
“Hitler’s dead.” Luka rubbed the sticks as fast as he could. Faster, faster, until one of them cracked. Somewhere, far behind the tree line, a branch snapped back. The sound made Luka jump.
Maybe the wolves were coming out early.
Forget cigarettes and motorcycles. He wanted his gun.
“He’s not dead!” Felix’s voice rose from lilting rave to madman. “He doesn’t die! Can’t die! Won’t die!”
It was all a little too loud and crazy for Luka’s taste. Felix might as well have been screaming Tasty meat here! All you can eat! to the region’s apex predators. The victor was considering the easiest ways to shut him up when Felix’s voice dropped back to a whisper all on its own.
“S’her fault. All this… the project.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Führer never dies.” Felix struggled to push himself up. To Luka’s surprise, the boy managed a few dozen centimeters. “You! You’re an Arschloch!”
“I know,” Luka told him. “And you’re delirious. Now, sit down and shut up.”
Miraculously, he did. Luka wasn’t sure if it was because he’d suddenly decided to be agreeable, or if the effort of his insult had caused him to faint. Whatever the case, he was thankful for the cease in Come and eat us, wolves volume.
But the cracks and snaps in the woods were growing louder. Closer. Luka abandoned his attempts at friction and grabbed one of the larger sticks from his fire-to-be. If the forest creatures did decide to make a meal out of him, there was no way on this frostbitten earth he’d go down without a fight. Luka gripped the base of the pine branch and watched the trees. Something did emerge—bright eyes first, running toward the boys with fearsome speed.
It was Yael.
It wasn’t until Luka saw her bursting from the trees that he realized he hadn’t been afraid she wouldn’t. It had not even occurred to him that she might’ve decided to ditch them in this snow-laden taiga.
Huh.
She strode straight over to Felix and lifted the parachute from his body. She laid the fabric flat on the ground and started rolling the mechanic on top of it.
“Help me move him,” Yael said as she gripped one end of the parachute and pulled. She was turning it into a stretcher! Smart. Though, when Luka grabbed the other end and Felix disappeared into the white fabric, it reminded him more of a body bag.
“Move him where, exactly?”
The fräulein’s hair was a mess of blood-matted knots, and her face was even messier as she turned to Luka. He did not expect the smile he saw—wild, white-toothed, lighting her whole expression into something triumphant.
“I found a house.”
CHAPTER 14
Yael hadn’t found just a house, but a whole village of huts. A gray ramshackle collection of cabins set along a stream too large to be frozen. Her initial approach had been tactical. She hid for several minutes in the woods on the settlement’s perimeter, scanning for life. But there was no orange glow behind the windows. No smoke whispering from chimneys. No men splitting piles of wood with their axes. No wives calling them inside to dinner. There was just the river sliding by: a low and steady murmur.
The whole place was deserted. From the looks of things, it had been for years. Some of the cabins’ roofs had collapsed, bowed down by one too many snowfalls. The few cellars Yael peered into yielded jars of preserves (still intact) and potato sacks (empty, their contents long ago liquefied and evaporated). Cabin after cabin told the same story: plates on the tables, pools of wax sitting where candles once burned, chairs overturned, doors kicked in. Life interrupted.
When Yael reached the opposite end of the settlement, she saw the truth splayed out in the path between the cabins. This village wasn’t simply deserted.
It was dead.
Their bones were a tangle, worn down by wilderness and time, scattered by animals. Counting the bodies was impossible; the skeletons were too far gone. All Yael could tell was that there were many of them. All sizes, all ages, all shot dead to make room for future Aryan settlers. The carbon-writ signature of an SS blitzkrieg. Henryka had conveyed similar stories of horror from her own home country—raping, looting, mass executions. Entire cities disappeared as the SS advanced, claiming the land as Lebensraum. Land they didn’t even use. This village had been slaughtered and forgotten. Flesh left to rot with the potatoes.
Yael’s approach with Luka, and Felix in the parachute-turned-stretcher, was different. She chose a house on the end of the row, farthest from the bones. It wasn’t the largest cabin, nor the best stocked, but the roof was intact, and it was a few lunges away from the shelter of the woods.
Just in case.
She felt as if she was about to collapse when they dragged Felix into the sitting room, setting him (parachute and all) in the corner. But there could be no rest yet. The temperature was dropping, and they needed sustenance. Badly.
Fire first. Food second. Then she had to tend to Felix’s wound.
The first two tasks were relatively easy. Whoever massacred the villagers hadn’t even gone to the trouble to raid their houses properly. Dishes were stacked in cupboards, the drawers full of long stick matches and tallow-fat candles. Any woodpiles had long rotted away, so Yael sent Luka out with an ax to piece apart one of the neighboring cabins. T
he wood was dry, and it burned well.
For food, she scavenged some canned vegetables from the cellars. These were still edible, though Yael wasn’t really sure what vegetable it was. Both she and Luka were hungry enough to scarf down their individual jars without comment. Yael grabbed a third jar for Felix, along with a sealed bottle of vodka she’d found in the seventh house, and returned to Adele’s brother.
He was unconscious in his corner, shivering. Pinned down by fever-fire.
Yael’s years with Vlad had trained her to survive in the harshest conditions. And though her medical knowledge was basic (cleaning wounds, setting bones, sewing sutures), it told her in no uncertain terms that Felix’s hand was not well.
Looking at the broken fingers in the candlelight, Yael was beyond amazed that the boy had been able to pick cuff locks, that he’d been able to function through the pain at all. The fingers were broken, and not cleanly. White bits of bone tore out of his joints, clumped with dry blood. And through it all an awful scent: the beginnings of rot.
Yael twisted the vodka bottle open and poured it over Felix’s wound. There was a second of stillness before the cold burn of the alcohol overcame the rage of Felix’s fever. His eyes snapped open, his arms flailed high as he screamed.
There were words in his agony: “YOU’RE THE DEVIL!”
“I’m sorry, Felix!” I’m so, so sorry. Yael tried to soothe him, but the boy seemed deaf in his pain. Felix’s wounded hand caught the vodka bottle, sent it flying across the floor. Luka appeared in the doorway, retrieving the unshattered container before too much alcohol spilled.
“He’s like this with everyone. Called me an Arschloch.” He nodded at the crumpled parachute, where Adele’s brother was still screeching in pain, spitting curses in her face. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”
Yet Yael did. Luka was an Arschloch. (Most of the time.) And she was… maybe not a devil… but definitely something dark. There was blood on her hands, on the parachute, in her dreams to prove it.