Susan was empathy personified.
“I pursued my own vengeance. I sent my operatives into Berlin, right under the Russian rockets. They sought to avenge my fallen comrades. Herr Malmagden had accumulated a brigade of living dead to unleash on the Russian advance as they entered the heart of Berlin, the Zitadel. My agents let them loose to find Malmagden and rip him to pieces.”
Karel nudged the man in the wheelchair. He nodded as if Kriene were leaving something out.
Kriene looked at him in fond annoyance. “Not now,” he said. “She doesn’t need to know that.”
The boy pouted. Kriene sighed.
“If it hadn’t been for Karel here, I doubt I could have carried on. He nursed me to health. He gave me the courage to face the new day, yes?”
“More than I ever did for Krzysztof,” the youth murmured.
Susan just looked at him. She looked at Kriene. Kriene looked a bit awkward. It took a moment for things to register.
“You—you were responsible for the massacre of the Volksstürm?”
“Hardly that. Herr Malmagden and myself have been rivals over many things.” Kriene patted the boy’s hand. “It only makes sense we take our rivalries as seriously in the areas of personal relationship as we do in the areas of professional accomplishment.”
“You caused all those people to be killed because you were jealous of Krzysztof Malmagden?”
“Who are you? Telford Taylor? Bitte, we are wasting time.”
“I had friends who were torn to pieces.”
Kriene looked aggrieved. “What do you care what Germans do to Germans?”
Like an old-time faith healer, Jürgen Kriene had worked his miracles upon her. Suddenly, Susan discovered that though her shoulders hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, they worked. And her hands were still strong enough she could grasp this Karel by his cute little neck and choke the living shit out of him.
It took both of Kriene’s henchmen to pull her off him. They shoved her back in her chair. Ralf Koehler pulled back to break her nose.
Kriene stopped him. “That will not be necessary,” he said. He had something better. He nodded toward the air, something in the air he wanted her to notice. “Do you hear that?”
It was the metronomic chant of Azathoth’s summoning—louder now. She could make out the words, despite the distance between the Summoning Tower and Kriene’s basement office suite.
“That is the death knell of your world,” Kriene said. “The alignment between Earth, Yuggoth—Pluto, that is—and Sirius will be optimal. The sacrifice will be made, and it will be too late for anyone to stop.”
Kriene smiled an unnerving smile. “You have some knowledge in these matters.” He could see it in her face.
“What about you?” she said. “When Azathoth comes, you die like the rest of us.”
She noticed Ralf and Florian were quiet at this point. They were more than a little curious to hear how Kriene was planning for the survival of his loyal staff.
Kriene made a dismissive gesture of the whole business. “Survival is not so impossible as we once imagined,” he said. “Indeed, we have kept men alive on Pluto for as long as twenty-one days before they ran out of air. Obviously, in our case, we plan something more permanent. As for you”— Kriene leaned forward to touch his finger lightly to the tip of her nose—“I see a future for you as a consort for Yog Sothoth.”
Susan thought of the woman in that hut on the shores of Faulkenberg Reservoir. Suddenly, that woman had a face.
“You have seen the results of our experiments at Faulkenberg Reservoir. Such interdimensional congress is somewhat mysterious to us still, but apparently not impossible. All the old goat needs is a healthy young uterus.” He gave Susan an encouraging smile. “I’m sure yours will do fine.”
He motioned to his men. “Take her to Yog Sothoth’s bridal chamber—and clean it before you use it. We do not want our guests to think ill of us.”
Florian looked worried. He started to complain, time was short.
Kriene made a preemptory gesture. “Time is always short for the lazy and disorganized.” He had further instructions for his men: “Get a camera. I want pictures this time. We owe a photographic record to science.”
With that, Jürgen Kriene gave Susan the best farewell bow he could manage, and wheeled himself out of the room.
A moment of silence followed. The chanting from the sacrifice site had taken on some disturbing harmonic, as if it had been joined by the voice of the Earth itself.
Susan saw the two men discuss her immediate future with quick, furtive glances. It occurred to her that—soldiers being what they were—Yog Sothoth might not receive an unsullied bride.