“No! Don’t you ever use your power against me. You’re not going to trick me again, Alise.”
“It’s not a trick,” Alise said. “It’s something to make you happy, a sign of my deep love for you...and, I hope, the love you feel for me, too...”
“It’s false love. That’s your power.”
“How can love be false if it feels true?” Alise began to blow out the pink dandelion-petal drops of power that would fill Juliana with love and affection for her.
“Stop it!” Juliana backed away from her, but Alise only blew out a thicker cloud, moving closer with a wicked smile.
“You love me!” Alise insisted.
Juliana fought back the only way she could. She took a deep breath, then exhaled the demon plague, as she’d been practicing. She’d reasoned that if Alise could send her power across through the air, then she might be able to do the same.
The plague blew out of her like a swarm of tiny black flies, dark spores that spread out as they traveled, swelling up to fill the room. They engulfed the pink spores Alise had blown out, successfully blocking them as she’d intended, but they traveled on, landing like dark cinders on Alise’s face, neck, and hands.
Alise screamed and staggered back as tiny lesions stippled her flesh, oozing black and blood. She slammed the door as she ran out of the room, and she screamed all the way down the hall.
Juliana panicked—she hadn’t meant to unleash so much, and she was lucky she hadn’t killed Alise. The cloud of spores spun in the room around her. She wondered if she could take them back in when she was done, so they wouldn’t accidentally harm anyone. She took a deep breath, and the entire cloud flowed back inside of her, like thousands of tiny flies returning to nest in the cells of her body.
Alise returned in less than a minute with a gang of six armed S.S. guards, all of them wearing gloves, their faces hidden behind bug-eyed gas masks. They seized Juliana, bound her hands in front of her, and gagged her before hauling her out of her room.
As they carried her down the hall, and then through a locked door and down two flights of steps, Alise stalked behind them, shouting at Juliana in English to make sure she understood. Alise’s face was pockmarked with little dark boils where the demon plague had touched her.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” Alise screamed. “Do you know who I am? Who my father is? Do you know how often I’ve stood in the crowd, helping to fill everyone with the proper love of the Fuehrer while he spoke? Do you know how the Party has grown since my father sent me to Berlin? Do you know about the private gatherings I had, inviting Party officials to breed with the finest stock from the League of German Girls? They all know who I am. I am everything here, and you are nothing!”
The guards laid Juliana on the floor of a concrete cell with a narrow cot. She didn’t struggle, and they removed her bonds before backing away and slamming the thick wooden door. Alise’s hideously infected face looked in at her through the small, barred window set into the door.
“You will never come near me again,” Alise said. “Consider this your maternity ward. Congratulations, whore, you’re pregnant.” She slammed the panel outside the window, leaving Juliana in darkness.
Juliana worked the gag out of her mouth and ran to the closed window.
“What?” she shouted. “What did you say?”
She heard the distant sound of Alise cackling as she departed down the hall.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Esmeralda remained silent as the guards led her back to her concrete cell and closed the door. She’d gained a few small privileges through her cooperation, such as a larger cell with a refrigerator, a television set and books to read, but she was still a prisoner.
They had her studying more and more bodies, most of them from the Middle East or Afghanistan. Some were members of violent factions in their own countries, while others seemed to be cases of mistaken identity or bad information. All of them had lived lives full of misery, poverty, and violence, amid bombs and gunfire. Experiencing so many brutal lives rattled Esmeralda, wearing her down day after day.
She was truly beginning to believe Ashleigh had been right about something: they reincarnated, often in groups, drawn to each other life after life, bound by love and hate. She’d continued having flashes of another life since arriving here, and she was beginning to accept that it must have happened, they must have all been here before. If that weren’t true, then she was losing her mind.
Esmeralda sat on her bed with her legs folded and concentrated. If she had been here before, she was going to learn all she could about it. She was determined to escape, but so far, she didn’t have any idea how it would be possible. From the past, she could at least learn about the layout of the complex, though things might have changed considerably. The place had clearly been reconstructed since then. She might also learn why they’d been drawn back into the same situation again, and how to stop it for good.