“This one,” explained the creature who held Susan from behind, “we are simply making ready for use.” Susan heard the voluptuous wetness of lips smacked. A large head came to rest on her shoulder. She forced herself to look down at him. Yellow eyes rolled up to meet hers. The stink of rotten meat filled the wet night air.
“As for you, you shall be envied by all the poor people of this vanquished nation. They go hungry tonight. You both shall feast.”
The one in the middle passed into the shadows and then reappeared with a pair of bolt cutters, which it snapped suggestively at the air. Susan searched the floor for a rock or a chunk of concrete. She had vowed in Berlin that she would not die a soldier’s death. Not like the soldiers she had seen in Berlin.
She looked up to find the bolt cutter handles being placed into her hands.
“What looks good?” A huge gray hand extended toward Charley Shrieve with inviting languor. She was thrust forward a step and let go. “Go ahead. Picks something delicious.”
“Fuck you.” She hoped she wasn’t crying.
“You choose, or we choose for you.”
She lunged for him, and—surprise—caught hold of his fingers. She closed her eyes and brought the handles together till she felt a crunch of bone, heard a scream.
The bloody paw came back-handed across her cheek. It knocked her into the grasp of his companion.
The “philosopher” studied his bereft hand disconsolately. He nodded to the one at her back, which took her arm. It leaned back its head, mouth pulled wide till she saw the gleam of curved, pointed incisors. The skin along her forearm tingled.
A new laughter filled the dank air. All stood still as a shadow detached itself from the lesser darkness at the top of the stair.
“Schopenhauer.” The voice was cultured and soft, with none of the bumptious enthusiasm she remembered in Plötzensee Prison. “As always, you think of your belly instead of your duty.”
One of the creatures muttered the name in surprise—“Malmagden.”
Susan felt her arm released. Apparently Malmagden went beyond their mission parameters.
“Stürmbannführer,” the one raised his bloody paw in greeting. “We heard you were alive and at large. Come over here. We are just about to serve up a couple of Allied agents to one another.”
Susan remembered her Walther, which Schopenhauer—the one that held her upper arm—no doubt had behind his back. Shrieve seemed to be looking behind her. Maybe he could even see it.
“See here,” it hissed wetly. “We’ve got a pretty one for you. Come and see.” Had Malmagden’s creatures seen him driven around in the Plymouth? Or had things been strained between them for a lot longer than that?
“I am acquainted with the young woman. Thank you.” Malmagden smiled at her. “Do you see?” He gestured toward the thing in front of her. “These creatures were my personal guard. I was feared among all the officers of the Zentralbund for making their acquaintance. Only one man afforded himself the luxury of my enmity. And I am settling my affairs with Herr Kriene presently.”
Malmagden turned his smile toward the nearest of his ghouls. He ambled down the stairs till he stood dwarfed in the creature’s shadow. “Hegel,” he said, and reached up to put his hands to its forehead. He might have been an anxious father, checking a fever in his little boy.
Hegel smiled uncertainly at his partners. Ghouls’ riddles, Susan guessed. Full of rough little surprises.
Malmagden leaned forward and Hegel bowed to catch his whisper: “You’re dead.”
The crimson eyes lit up as if candles burned down behind them. Hegel screamed and clutched its head between its elbows. Its eyes melted out of their sockets.
Schopenhauer thrust Susan away; she spun to see him pull out the Walther, but the beast was panicking. The draw was messy.
She lunged and hacked at the hairy wrist with the edge of her palm, right where the nerve would have run through the arm of a man.
The gun bounced off the concrete slab. Susan scooped it off the ground just as Schopenhauer clamped his hand on her throat.
She fired blindly. The creature collapsed to its knees, screaming. She fired again and hit something crucial. The thing flopped over on its back.
The one named Kant did not wait on the outcome of the fight. It stiff-armed Charley Shrieve into the corner and scrabbled to the stairs. Susan stepped forward and steadied a bead on the shadow in the door.
Malmagden put a hand to her wrist.
“Bitte.” He was almost courtly as he pressed her gun down.
She saw his lips curling around words she couldn’t quite make out. His fingers twined into figures that reminded her of things she couldn’t quite place.