“Guccio lost his bid for the Lord of Night’s place, I expect,” Kocourek said. “Someone killed him.”
“Vampires,” I said dryly, “are dead already.”
“Are we?” he said. “Maybe. Then let us just say that someone destroyed Guccio today. And I and my whole seethe walk free.” He looked at his comrades. “There were eighteen of us. And the five of us who were our own people, we had our households—our humans. When we came here two years ago, my seethe counted ninety-seven. Mary creates vampires quickly, but she destroys at an even greater rate. She is more witch than vampire, and that’s why Guccio values her.” He gave a curt nod to the chained vampire. “You saw what she does.”
“Why are you hiding your sheep from her?” I asked.
Vanje, the mustache-wearing vampire, jerked his head toward me and growled.
Kocourek held up a hand. “These are not sheep, Mercedes. These are the last of our households. The people who served us well and faithfully—only to be turned into . . . what did you call them? Sheep. Mary’s people call them dobytek. Vieh. Cattle. We called them our friends.”
“Not all of them,” said Dagmar pragmatically. “We just gathered up the humans and brought them down here. Two of them are a couple of people Mary collected last week—and why are we telling this to a naked human who is interesting only because she is the wife of an American werewolf, Kocourek?”
“Because it is good to talk,” he said. “To remind ourselves of who we are, that we are no longer subservient to Mary. Because she is not a human—you must not have observed her change. She is a coyote shapeshifter. From America. And because I want her to answer our questions.”
It came again, the double strike against Mary’s magic, and this time the second strike lasted for a long time—ten or twenty seconds.
“That stings,” said Lars on a gasp when it let up.
“What do you want to know?” I asked. I wiped my nose on my wrist because I thought it was running, but it was blood not snot. Less embarrassing, maybe. But I would have rathered it was snot. Blood meant these attacks were causing damage. Mary’s bit of witchcraft must be drawing power from anyone who had magic inside her sphere of influence; otherwise, we wouldn’t all be feeling it—and the mundane humans not reacting at all.
“Coyotes are tricksters,” Lars said.
“That’s not a question,” I retorted. “But Coyote is a trickster.”
“You are a death walker?” he said, suddenly very interested. “One who has power over the dead.”
And that right there told me that this vampire from Prague knew as much about what I was as I did. Just like the golem had. I didn’t say anything. This was bad. This was very bad. Because if he said what I thought he was going to say, it might mean that someone besides Bonarata was behind my ending up unexpectedly in Prague.
“One of your kind came through here during the First World War,” Lars said.
“Don’t tell me.” I groaned. “His name was Gary Laughingdog.” My very much older half brother whom I had just met this past winter. Hadn’t he said he volunteered for the army in World War I?
“You know of him?” Kocourek said. “He caused a lot of trouble here, in this town. Afterward, he told me that it was a curse of his—to come and make havoc. He said he tried to leave things better than when he came, but he would not answer for the bloodshed, destruction, and mayhem that happened while he was here.”
I hate coincidences. I don’t really believe in them, less now than before I met Coyote. But what in the world made Coyote care about vampires in Prague? And why would he think I could do anything about them? Probably my being here was just a coincidence, and I was being paranoid.
“She can command the dead?” asked Lars. “Can she command us?”
“Can you?” asked Kocourek.
I suppose I could have lied. But being raised by werewolves meant I’d never made lying a habit. “I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe. Sometimes. No.” I shrugged.
“Gary Laughingdog could,” Kocourek said.
“Scary bastard,” said Vanje. “I was glad he went back to fighting Germans.”
“So what did you bring down on Mary’s head, Mercedes who walks with the dead?” Kocourek asked.
And then I knew what Coyote might find interesting about Prague, and it wasn’t the vampires.
Before I had to work up an answer for Kocourek, the upstairs door blew open, and Mary turned on the lights.
“Kocourek,” she said. And then she said some other things in another language—stuff that was obviously orders.
I didn’t think she’d gotten notice that Kocourek wasn’t hers to order anymore.
“She wants to know where our humans are,” Kocourek said. “She needs to feed her witchcraft with them so she can withstand the monster at our gates. What did you bring down upon us, Mercy?”
“It’s the golem,” I told him.
He froze and turned back to me. “The golem?”
“The golem?” asked Dagmar. “Didn’t Gary say something about the golem? He was always saying odd things.” She frowned, then her face cleared. “I’ve got it. He said the golem wasn’t dead, and someone should do something about that.”
Lars said, “And he was sure glad his name wasn’t someone because that was going to be a messy job.”
“I remember the golem,” said Vanje thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that was a good choice, Mercedes Hauptman. It took the good rabbi four days of work to put that thing down—and the rabbi was never the same afterward.”
Mary said something sharply.
“She wants us to quit speaking English,” said Lars. “I don’t know about the golem—I wasn’t here when the golem was active. But I think someone needs to do something about Mary. And I’m willing to be someone today. How about you?”
Kocourek said something to Mary in a conciliatory voice.
I don’t know what it was, but I thought from the tone, he’d decided Lars was right. Instead of hiding their people from her, he was going to lure her down.
“Witch,” I murmured. “Witches can kill you from a distance, and they are sneaky. Are you sure you don’t—”
And the golem attacked her spells again. This time when the first wave hit, I blacked out. When I opened my eyes again, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one.
Mary had collapsed on the stairs and rolled to the bottom. Lars was flat on his face in the dirt. Dagmar was getting to her feet. Vanje had a hand under Kocourek’s elbow, pulling him upright.
Mary reached out and wrapped her hand around Lars’s wrist. Her voice hoarse, she started chanting. I was pretty sure it was the same thing she’d used before when she tortured the screaming-clanking vampire with her magic. I couldn’t understand her, but the rhythm was the same.
“Stop her,” I said as Lars twitched convulsively.
And the ghost formed right next to Mary and dug her fingers into Mary’s wrist. I don’t think Mary saw her, but the ghost’s fingernails drew blood as she wrenched at Mary’s wrist, breaking her hold on Lars.
Mary stopped chanting to say something ugly. She flung her bleeding hand up, and a drop of her blood hit Vanje. It didn’t seem possible that she’d done it on purpose—but I could feel the wave of magic that hit Vanje, sending him to the ground with a cry.
His skin erupted in reddish bumps with black centers that grew with hideous speed. The little black circles in the center grew, too, spreading out and lightening to purple on the edges. He thrashed and twisted, his movements sluggish.
My ghost hit Mary on the shoulder with both hands, causing the vampire to stagger. Mary turned to see who had hit her, and I could see by her face that she still couldn’t see the ghost.
And the golem hit the spells again.
Mary screamed in agony—which made my own pain somehow hurt less. She reached out and pulled her
magic back from Vanje, who lost his horrible, plague-like lumps. I couldn’t tell for certain, but it felt as though she was able to pull more magic back than what she’d sent at him. She used that magic to do something that changed the shape of the power of the golem’s attack for just a moment—enough to make my ears ring.
Then there was nothing. The golem’s attack just stopped. I wondered if she’d destroyed him.
Mary rose unsteadily to her feet. She kicked Vanje and spat something at him.
Kocourek staggered out of the shadows near the staircase, sword in hand. With a lunge and a twist of his upper torso that would have done credit to Babe Ruth, he cut off her head while she kicked Vanje a second time.
We all waited for something to happen. In the movies, when someone killed the spell caster, all of their spells just go away. There were some magics like that. I’d seen them myself. But according to Elizaveta, if the witch was good enough to set spells that were self-sustaining, then they actually had to be broken.
I have to admit, I was waiting for her to get back up and kill us all. Even the ghost seemed to catch the worry; she kept touching Mary’s decapitated head and making it roll.
The third time she did it, Vanje noticed and rose to his feet with a yelp.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s only a ghost.”
Galina, the ghost told me. My name is Galina.
And though I knew better, I said, “Galina.”
“What?” said Dagmar.
Kocourek said, “Don’t you remember Gary? He always was talking to dead people—and I don’t mean vampires. Galina is the ghost.”
Galina tried kicking the head this time, and it rolled about three feet, coming to rest about six inches from Lars.
“Tell her not to do that, please,” said Lars. He was still sitting where he’d fallen, cradling the hand Mary had grabbed against his chest.
But I didn’t have to because Mary’s head and body collapsed into dust.
“Okay,” Lars said. “That works, too.”
The golem attacked again, and this time it broke Mary’s spells. It didn’t hurt this time. It didn’t hurt me, anyway. The vampires all cried out. It didn’t take them long to recover, but by that time the golem was entering the apartment house. He made a lot of noise tearing down the door.
“Can everyone see us now? The building, I mean,” I asked. I was stuck in the stupid cage and unable to do anything. But if the humans could see us, then soon there would be police and firefighters and all the good people who help others. And they would be coming into a place filled with vampires.
Humans could not find out about the vampires. No one sane wanted a panic war where all the supernaturally gifted people—and anyone else who might be thought supernaturally gifted—were killed by their neighbors with whatever weapons they had handy. There was no way something like that would not be a total disaster.
“No,” said Dagmar. “I don’t think so anyway. Two different spells. Mary designed it so the veil magic would last a month or two before it faded. She was planning on moving into Kocourek’s seethe, assuming Guccio killed Bonarata.”
“You gave the golem back its body,” said Vanje, listening, as we all were, to the sound of something very heavy moving over our heads. Then the screaming started.
“It won’t hurt you,” I told him. “You’re the good guys.”
Vanje looked at me. “We are vampire, Mercy. Not even when the rabbi first gave it life would it have tolerated vampires in its territory. At its end point, not even being Jewish and a decent person was good enough. It will kill us all if it can.”
“Dawn is coming,” said Lars, who had at last risen to his feet.
“How long do you have?” I asked.
“Not long enough to fight off the golem,” said Kocourek. “Assuming we could. Less than five minutes.”
“Get under the stairs with your people,” I told them. “That will keep you out of sight. I’ll do my best to keep the golem off you.”
“You are in a cage,” said Lars. “How is it that you will stop the golem?”
“Can you open it?” I asked, rattling the door a little.
Kocourek shook his head. “Mary spelled that box shut. She was the only one who could open it.”
“The golem is only after the bad guys,” I said, trying not to hear the screams. “I’ll tell him you are the good guys.”
Kocourek sighed, gave the other vampires a wry smile. “It has been an adventure, people. I am glad to have served with you.”
While he spoke, his vampires had been following my advice.
Dagmar said something to him in a language I didn’t understand, presumably Czech, but it could have been Serbian. Kocourek laughed, shook his head, and crawled under the stairs with them. They arranged the humans so that they were on the inside, protected by the vampires still.
I’d expected them to put the humans on the outside to shield the vampires from the light. But these were the good guys, right? Right.
The cries upstairs stopped at the same time the vampires under the stairs died in the dawn. As if in response, the destruction upstairs redoubled. The floor on the side of the basement where Dagmar had carried the girl’s body collapsed with a roar of brick, stone, and rubble.
Coughing and choking in the resultant dust, I realized that it might all be over even if the golem didn’t find us down here. Light broke through the rubble on the far side of the room in dim rays that illuminated the dust in the air.
The dust settled. The sunlight seemed out of place—and I was glad the vampires were under the stairway, or my saving them from the golem would have been a moot point. After a while, I wondered if the golem, like the vampires, was only active at night—or if it would leave me alone down here.
Galina seemed unaffected by the light, which was my experience with ghosts. Most people encountered ghosts at night more often than during the day. I suspected it was because if they see a ghost in the day, they don’t recognize what they are seeing.
The golem came at last. It ducked through the doorway and started down the stairs. The stairs were sturdy, and they didn’t even creak under his weight.
He wasn’t the biggest monster I’ve ever seen. He was maybe eight feet tall and looked like an animated suit of armor made of red clay. His face had no features, no eyes, no mouth. There were also no letters on his forehead for me to erase if I needed to.
His magic felt different than it had before, which was only to be expected. He was different now. I’d given him the power to become real again.
“Greetings to the Golem of Prague,” I said.
It paused on the stairs.
You do not belong here, he told me.
I couldn’t tell if he meant here in the basement or in his city. He clarified it for me without my having to ask, so I guess he was still in my head.
Your help was necessary. You should leave and not ever come back. I won’t be so lenient again.
“I’m trapped here,” I told him. “As you know very well. I will leave when I can.”
Acceptable, it said. And it started down the stairs again. It was an awkward-looking movement. Since the stairs weren’t wide enough for his feet, the golem leaned back to center his weight over his . . . over what would have been his heels had he been human.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
There are demons here. The last of the demons in my city.
The Jewish Quarter, I thought, not Prague. I hoped he didn’t mean Prague.
“You’ve done your job,” I told him. “The vampires left here are no villains. They mean no harm to the people here.”
Yeah. I had a hard time with that last one, too, after I said it. Vampires ate people. It was what they did. But they had brought all the humans here to shelter them, and they were still guarding them to the best of their abilities. r />
They are demons, said the golem. They must be destroyed.
“What about the humans?” I asked.
They are not my people, he said—and I felt a cold chill. Because I knew what he meant.
Vanje had said that not even being Jewish had been enough to save people from the golem.
I didn’t know what percentage of the people living in Josefov were still Jewish. But if Prague was like the rest of Europe, after the Nazis got through with the city, it was a far smaller percentage than it had been when this had been the only place in Prague the Jewish population could live. And if being Jewish wouldn’t save them anyway, it didn’t matter because the golem would kill them all. If Vanje was right.
“What will you do to the humans who are not Jewish?” I asked.
They are not my people, the golem said. None of the humans are my people. I have no people.
“What if they are Rabbi Loew’s people?” I asked.
It roared at me without a sound. I covered my ears, and it didn’t do any good at all. In that sound, I heard a fury built up over centuries of frustration and rage. He didn’t speak in words, but I heard him just fine. The rabbi had condemned him to that horrible half death, burdened him with the need to guard and no means by which to do it.
He didn’t intend to stop at destroying the vampires. Or the humans. And being Jewish wasn’t going to save anyone from him.
I drew a deep breath as the golem took the last step down.
“Stop,” I said. “Stop moving.” And I used the power that allowed me to give orders to the dead.
It stopped. It had eaten the magic of all the ghosts we could call here between us (except for Galina). That meant its power came from the dead—and the dead had to listen to me. And then it did to me whatever it had done to Mary’s spellcrafting.
When I could open my eyes again, the golem had found the vampires. The space between the old furnace and the stairway was too narrow for the golem to get through, though he had pounded the furnace into half the size it had been. So he reached down and began tearing up the stairs.
When we’d removed the anchors that allowed the manitou of the volcano god to travel, it had been forced back to its original home. I had to do something like that here.