Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (31 page)

Time lost all meaning inside the Eidolon’s bubble. Marsh was incapacitated while it scanned him and the blood of the man he’d killed, but when he returned to himself the sheath of unreality hadn’t dissipated. He staggered to his feet under another volley of Enochian.

Blood. It wanted more blood.

The dead guard’s uniform didn’t fit. The boy was too small. Marsh couldn’t even pull the trousers on. His hands hardly fit through the wrists of the jacket. The pockets contained a knife, a few coins, three cigarettes, and a packet of safety matches. He kept the knife, the Walther, and the matches, but abandoned everything else.

Back in the cellar, he headed toward the archives, retracing the route he’d memorized on his first summoning to Himmler’s office. The Eidolon’s attention kept pace with him. Ripples of impossibility followed in his wake.

He couldn’t tell how long it took to reach the filing cabinets in the former laundry. A millisecond, perhaps, or a millennium. Marsh had to dodge the ghosts of former washerwomen in order to read the labels on the cabinets. He followed the sequence of filing numbers as though it were a trail of bread crumbs. It led him to the wine cellar.

Barrel vaults had long ago been carved into the bedrock. But filing cabinets and freestanding metal shelves now occupied the spaces where wooden racks had once held countless dusty bottles of wine and port. Bare brass fixtures revealed the spots where gas lamps had lighted the hotel’s early days. But the Schutzstaffel had affixed electrical cables to the ceiling, providing power for the bare light bulbs that now cast shadows through the archives.

When Will had shown Gretel to the Eidolon, the entire ordeal hadn’t taken very long. But now the Eidolon’s prolonged presence distorted reality in ways Marsh had never imagined. Inanimate objects hissed at him, the Eidolon’s loathing made incarnate. Shadows writhed like angry tentacles in Marsh’s wake.

One of the slithering shadows whipped a tendril at his ankle bone. A stab of pain shot through his bare foot. The tendril left a ring-shaped burn and the odor of burnt flesh. The shadow bulged and undulated like the silhouette of a python swallowing a rat. Marsh kept to the light.

He found an unoccupied desk. The archivist wasn’t on duty. He didn’t know if that meant it was later at night than he’d realized, or because the man had heard the commotion and gone to investigate. Judging from the dates on the topmost paperwork, it was mid-November. He’d lost track of the days. Felt like a century since he’d seen Liv.

She probably thinks I’m dead. Might have even come to terms with it by now. Has she moved on? She has Agnes to care for; she needs a husband.

If he let them, he knew, the fear and sorrow would cripple him. This was his only chance to see Agnes and Liv again; he had to move quickly. There would be time for mourning later.

He forced the tears aside and concentrated on rifling through the desk. He found more cigarettes, more matches, more money, and a flask. When he unscrewed the cap, the fumes numbed his nose and made his eyes water. It smelled like the loneliness of a medieval scholar. But there was something else, too, beneath the Eidolonic distortion.

Homebrewed schnapps. Apricot? He prayed to God, if there was one, that the schnapps was genuine.

Marsh dumped out the rubbish bin. He placed all of his matches and the flask inside it, then set off again in search of the files. Another century passed while Marsh found the operational records of the REGP, and the IMV before that, and the privately funded orphanage before that. An entire niche of the former wine cellar had been dedicated to von Westarp’s work. There were other records back at the farm, records of that madman’s research, but the Schutzstaffel kept the only operational records close at hand.

The shelving kept the paper files packed too tightly for adequate airflow. He couldn’t simply touch a match to the lot. Carelessly dumping the files on the floor wouldn’t help. He had no choice but to be patient and feed the fire slowly until it built up enough heat to generate a suitable draft. He had to do it right. This was his only opportunity. How long would the Eidolon stay with him?

Marsh splashed a bit of schnapps into the rubbish bin. The fumes burned with a pale blue flame. Precious centuries ticked away while he fed the first of thousands of pages of documentation into the bin. The flames turned from blue to orange to yellow, growing above the lip of the bin as he fed the fire with doses of paper and schnapps. Soon, the niche smelled of ash and apricots.

He couldn’t watch the fire. It hurt his mind. The Eidolon’s proximity transformed the flames into serrated saw teeth that grated past one another while crystalline spindles whirled through the troughs.

The fire grew brighter and hotter, casting more shadows into the archives. Marsh had to keep circling the fire, practically dancing about it like a pagan loon on Midsummer’s morning, lest his bare feet get melted off by acidic tendrils. Sidestepping the angriest shadows and nursing the fire kept him occupied.

He didn’t hear the shot.

A thumb-tip-sized portion of the limestone arch exploded into chips that nicked Marsh’s face, hands, and feet. He hit the floor. Shadows burned his feet and hands. The Eidolon repeated the mad-making gibberish that Will had once claimed was a name.

*

I clamped my hands over my ears. There it went with my wretched name again.
Your map is a circle. A broken spiral.

“Why is it doing this?”

“I think he’s bleeding,” said Will.

*

Marsh pulled the Walther, but shelves obstructed his view in every direction. He couldn’t peer past the rippling interplay of light and shadow. But the angle of the shot constrained the shooter’s location.

There: movement at the end of an aisle. Marsh rolled behind the rubbish bin to line up a shot. But the ruby-tipped flames had retreated to a lowly sizzle. He couldn’t let the fire die. He reached up to slide an armload of files from the nearest shelf. A bullet whistled past his hand,
pinged
from a nearby strut, and lodged into a stack of reports from late 1938 detailing Kammler’s efficacy against Spanish Republican mortar emplacements.

Marsh yanked back his hand, and dove.
Bloody fuck.

No chance of charging his attacker this time. Attackers? He’d been lucky in the corridor, but that had been a straight run. Too many obstacles here. He had to be patient, work his way closer one aisle at a time, until either he had a clear shot or the Eidolon drove the Jerries mad. Assuming it lingered that long.

There had to be more than one of the bastards down here by now. If the shooting hadn’t attracted them, the smoke had, and if the smoke hadn’t, the constant disintegration of reality must have raised a few eyebrows. Marsh splashed more schnapps on the fire. Emerald flames leapt from the rubbish bin. He fired off a covering shot and heaved another armload of papers into the bin. Fire licked at the edges of the new pile. That would buy him a few minutes.

He crept in the direction of the last shot. Another volley of screeches and chthonic rumbles echoed through the cellar. The Eidolon had made these noises after Marsh shot the first guard. Demands for more blood.

“If you want it so badly,” said Marsh, under his breath, “kill the bastards yourself. Or feed the fire. Anything. Just help me.” But the Eidolons weren’t listening, even if they had given him a name.

More movement, in front of him, a few aisles down. And to the right … The goose-steppers were circling around behind him. Cutting him off from the fire.

Silently cursing Liddell-Stewart, Marsh retreated.

There was no way to know how many men were in the archives now, loitering outside the range of his gun and the Eidolon’s cyclone of unreality. Probably half the bloody Reich. But they only had three avenues into the Reichsbehörde niche. The arrangement of shelves constrained his attackers as much as they constrained him. More so—they had to take care not to shoot their own men. And they feared to rush him because of the Eidolon. Did they know what was happening?
Here’s your chance, Himmler.

Marsh chose an aisle. He fired two shots into the shadows, then pressed himself behind the limestone arch. Over the whisper of star-driven winds and the chiming of a ghostly trolley, he could just make out yells in German. Return fire carved more chips from the wall. He leapt out, rolled behind the bin, then shot into a different aisle.

While jackboots shuffled in the distance, he unsheathed his stolen knife and climbed the shelves. It enabled him to reach the cable bolted to the ceiling. The bare bulbs that provided light for the archives hung at regular intervals from cables like this one. A few moments of frantic sawing were repaid by a jolt hard enough to knock him to the floor and the overwhelming taste of copper.

Now the only light in and around his section of the archive came from the fire. The very unnatural fire.

And if the Jerries were playing it safe, their scout would be approaching down the central aisle. Marsh’s gunfire had, he hoped, ensured the other avenues were covered, and there wasn’t room between the stacks of files to fire around a scout.

Marsh watched through a gap in the shelves as a pair of SS guards came creeping forward. Their boots clicked on the stone floor. Both held their sidearms in shaking hands. They’d entered the Eidolon’s sphere of influence, where the air burned like frostbite, the shadows writhed like serpents, and the archives echoed with the death cries of ancient stars. The play of ghostly firelight made a grotesquerie of their faces.

Marsh pressed his back to the shelves and heaved. Nothing happened. He’d lost too much strength during his incarceration. He strained. A grunt escaped him. The shelves tilted.

One scout turned. “What—”

Slowly, more slowly than the turning of the seasons, the shelving unit toppled, showering the men with crates of files. It didn’t hurt them badly. But it knocked them down.

Into the writhing, snapping shadows. Tendrils slithered over the men. One soldier dropped his gun, slapped at his bare hands and face. But he couldn’t fend them off. Dark tendrils sizzled against his upper lip. Greasy smoke wafted from the wound. Within moments the shadows enveloped his companion, too.

The men beat themselves bloody, trying to stave off the assault from an altered reality.

And the Eidolon pounced.

*

I clamped my hands over my ears for the second time that night. “For God’s sake,” I yelled, “what is it now?”

“Something about blood maps.” Will had gone pale from the exertion. His hoarse voice called to me over the din of Enochian: “I think it’s sampling blood. New blood.”

A chill sweat percolated through my skin. I knew what that meant. My doppelgänger was in a fight. And every man he wounded or killed meant another blood map that widened the Eidolons’ beachhead into our world. I’d seen firsthand what could happen if they perceived enough of it.

*

Marsh killed the scouts. Their screams had driven the other Jerries to retreat a safe distance outside the Eidolon’s sphere of influence. It gave him time to strip the men of their weapons and, in the case of the smaller fellow, clothes.

The fire had grown. Marsh tossed another armload of files on the fire, then doused the pile with the last of the schnapps. He changed into an SS-Schütze uniform by the light of burning medical records. But the fire cast no warmth, offered no relief to his cold, emaciated flesh. The crystalline flames and their impossible shapes sucked heat from the room. Serpentine darkness snapped at the gooseflesh stippling his legs and arms.

More than half of the Reichsbehörde files had been reduced to ashes. Many of the files comprised films and photographs, too, which the fire had reduced to blackened slag. Marsh fed the fire as quickly as he dared while the Eidolon’s non-wind sculpted the ashes into impossible shapes that hurt to behold. If he worked too quickly, he risked smothering the fire. But he had to finish the task before the Jerries regrouped. They wouldn’t play it safe on the next assault. They’d come in force.

And so they did. Marsh threw himself behind the arch at the first sign of new movement in the shadows. A barrage of gunfire winged through the flames and chiseled new gouges in the limestone. They’d brought machine pistols.

Marsh leaned out, squeezed off two shots, ducked back. He didn’t hit anything. But the maneuver did enable him to confirm his suspicions. Guards advanced on the fire along all three aisles. Each carried an MP 34 submachine gun. Together, they probably had close to ninety rounds available, just in the current magazines.

The pistol in Marsh’s hand held one remaining cartridge. The other Walther held a magazine of eight.

He had to protect the fire. If he could hold on just a few more minutes, he’d have accomplished half of his mission in Germany. Except … it was a meaningless gesture. Burning the files was pointless without also destroying von Westarp’s farm. The farm produced new records every day.

Marsh risked another shot. Deafening return fire kept him pinned behind the limestone arch. When the echoes died down, he heard urgent murmuring and the scuffle of boots. The Jerries weren’t bothering to hide their intentions from him. They knew he was alone and outgunned. He dropped the empty pistol and drew the second.

Marsh’s thoughts turned, as they always did, to his wife and daughter.
I’m sorry, Liv. I should have told you the truth. I hope you find a man who makes you happy. A man who’ll be a good father to Agnes. I love you both.

Please tell her good things about me.

The guards charged. The Eidolon engulfed him again. Marsh closed his eyes, firing blindly past the fire. His body peeled apart in myriad directions—

*

The Eidolon’s howls blew out the windows. Glass tinkled to the warehouse floor. I shoved Will under my makeshift desk before the worst of the shards rained upon us. Glass crunched all around, like hailstones.

“What the hell is happening?”

“I don’t know!”

*

—and then back again.

Marsh opened his eyes. His gaze fell upon a trio of dead SS troops arranged around the dwindling sapphire flames. Each man had taken a single bullet in the back of the head. Like the other guards Marsh had killed. But he sure as hell had never shot like that, not even under controlled conditions.