Juliana was badly tempted to look back over her shoulder and see what Sebastian and Mia might be doing, but she didn’t want to spoil the impression that she was alone.
“Why did you do this, Kranzler?” Juliana asked. “All of this?”
“You must know by now.” Kranzler indulged in his cigar, smiled as he exhaled. “To identify surpernormal humans, those far ahead on the evolutionary curve. To study them. To breed them. To improve the human race.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do?” Juliana slowed her approach, expecting the S.S. officer to start firing at any moment. “And what did you learn about me?”
“The same as the others who have true powers,” Kranzler said. “Sebastian, Mia...It transfers through touch. It is not biological or chemical in nature. It defies all known physics.” He looked her over. “You and I might have more in common than you know. We should be on the same side. We should work together for the advancement of the human race. The Reich will raise up humanity, purify our race of all impurities, and push us forward into the future. You could be a powerful tool in the Fuehrer’s arsenal, Juliana. The other supernormals are amusing, sometimes useful. But you...yes, you are like a goddess of death. Your power shows great potential.”
Juliana stopped in place, chewing her lips, as if considering it. “Do you mean this? Even though I’ve killed some of your guards?”
“Your remarkable ability to kill is precisely what I admire. You would be lavishly rewarded. No more prison cells or dormitories for you. Your value is far beyond that.”
“I do have a question, Gruppenführer,” she said. “Alise used her power on me, though she cannot touch me.” Juliana wished Alise were in the room, but there was no sign of her or Niklaus. “She was able to form strange pink spores and blow them through the air. Do you think I could do that? Would you know?”
“That’s exactly what I believe.” He stood, approaching her now, a broad-shouldered man who towered over her, with a swastika on his black sleeve. “With time...with help and training from me...you could be far more powerful. You could destroy armies. Let me guide you. Let me be your teacher. I have a great knowledge about it, drawn from my own personal experience.” He stared at her carefully. “As I said, we are more similar than you think. Like you, I have a supernormal touch.”
Juliana watched him raise his hand and open it. She decided it wasn’t worth the risk of waiting to find out what it might be, if he was telling the truth. If he did have a supernatural power, she would deny him the chance to use it against her.
She exhaled the dense plague she’d been building up inside her. After using it so often, she was developing better control over the airborne plague. She imagined one of the endless flocks of blackbirds she’d seen as she traveled the South with the carnival, a river of cawing black shapes that flowed from horizon to horizon. The first time she’d seen one, she’d stood mesmerized as countless thousands of them crossed the sky. The flock had taken almost an hour to pass.
She directed her plague like the river of blackbirds, swirling around the heads of Kranzler and the other officers, attacking their eyes first. They drew their pistols automatically, screaming in pain, and a few fired blindly in her direction.
The Nazi officers howled and covered their red, rotting faces with swollen, ulcerous hands. The plague flowed thicker around them, streams of it burrowing bloody tunnels into their faces and chest. Kranzler and the other officers fell dead, their faces eaten open all the way to their throats.
Juliana looked around at all the remaining people in the room while the plague spores floated in a swirling cloud above Kranzler’s festering corpse. They stared back at her.
Juliana exhaled again, and the cloud of spores expanded rapidly, beyond her control now. The airborne plague filled the room, and dozens of people collapsed to the floor, coughing up blood. Their scalps and skin sloughed off as they clawed over each other, desperate to escape through one door or the other, shrieking and groaning.
She finally looked back. Sebastian was proceeding cautiously into the room, a pistol in each hand, but nobody was interested in challenging him now. Mia clung close to his back, hands under his shirt again, using his touch to protect her from the cloud of plague eating away at the slowly dying crowd of Nazis.
Those closest to Juliana were already dead, while those farthest away, by the windows, were slowly sinking to the floor, moaning as their flesh crumbled, crackled, and peeled from their bones. The demon plague had spared no one.
“More guards will be here soon!” Mia shouted. “Gas masks, machine guns...”