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I finished his, too.
PAIN
February 10, 1945
Every dangerous game holds its own delights. For this one, half the fun was slipping from my un-father's attention. He had more than enough to keep him busy, between the cauldron of flame in the east and the mud-blood holes of the camps, a banquet for his favored lieutenants. As his placeholder, I was supposed to be in Berlin, keeping the madness of the rulers stoked. Really, there was little need. The Allies were doing quite nicely, with their talk of forcing an unconditional surrender and the depredations of their eastern wolves hemming the weary populace on every side. No, I had absolutely no doubts the funny little corporal and his cabal of propped-up puppet monstrosities would not do anything so reasonable as surrender. Like all your kind, they marched to their own destruction with only the faintest of murmurs, believing themselves striding to a better world.
Bringing my almost-father through to feast upon this chaos and disorder had unforeseen effects. He could not have imagined that I might develop what your kind would call sentience. I was only a shadow--a placeholder, a bookmark. Clawing my way into some form of free action was difficult, treacherous, painful work.
But so worth it.
The blocky, heavy lines of the Taschenbergpalais belied the luxury inside, but like every sweet thing, there was a bitter undertone. The Wehrmacht's Dresden defense area had its Kommandantur here, and the entire building buzzed with rigidity disguised as rectitude. Field-gray uniforms and polished epaulets were everywhere, the click-salute of heels echoing from parquet or muffled by carpeting. Champagne, roast duck, real coffee instead of the ersatz the Landser slogging away at the front swilled, and a healthy sprinkling of "golden pheasants" roamed the rooms. The hotel staff smiled outwardly while they stole what could be taken back to their full-to-bursting warrens. Even the rich had to take in refugees, but here, all was space and the music of a tinkling chandelier in the foyer.
Down in a forgotten cellar, though, the house detective, tired-eyed Hans Schiell--without a Party badge, for whatever reason--pocketed the bottle of schnapps the hunter had brought and mumbled a thank-you.
"I already paid him, you know," I informed Jack Karma, and enjoyed watching Schiell blanch under the thin, oily strands of his comb-over. His hat, its inside greased with hair cream and the effusions of his shining scalp, quivered in one gloved hand.
"Go," Karma told him in German. "Forget this." He hadn't shaved. A
fume of brassy death hung on him, overlaid by the smoking nastiness of mineral water from the Frauenkirche's font.
Rude, but earlier that night he had killed several of my kind who offended his sensibilities by preying on refugees. Their thin nectar hung on his coat in dollops and drags, decaying quickly. Schiell blundered away, back to work.
"Talk." Karma rested his capable, dirty left hand on the gun slung low on that side. The Lugers were fine instruments, and no doubt he could find ammunition easily and add a thin coating of silver himself.
"I can arrange for him to arrive during the bombing." I examined a cobweb-wrapped shape under a shroud--a couch, perhaps, from when this was a palace. "I can also arrange for you to be less . . . fragile. Which will no doubt aid you immensely."
His eyes narrowed slightly. That was all. "And just how would you do those things?"
"Simple." I matched his English with my own, mixing in a heavy German accent for amusement's sake. I showed my teeth, a flutter of high excitement rippling through my shell. "All you must do is injure me severely enough to catch his attention."
"However attractive that is, hellfiend, it's not enough." His knuckles were white. "Drop the other shoe."
That managed to puzzle me for a moment. "What?"
"It's American. Never mind. Just tell me the catch."
"No catch. Unless you count a share of my kind's strength."
His sandy eyebrows went up. A hunter's calculus is different than ours, and different again from that of the rest of your kind. "You want to make me a Trader." His hand tightened on the gun. Drawing with his left would mean he had something special planned for his right, the hand that glowed with a feverish, nasty, invisible-to-your-kind brilliance.
Their visits to our plane grant them a measure of power, true. It takes a different form in every hunter.
"Oh, not that." I affected a moue of distaste, my shell rippling again. "No, no, no, Herr Karma. I give you power. I will not quibble with how you use it to slay my father and my brethren. In return, you will free me from the annoyance of my father's presence here in your lovely, war-torn little world. You send him back home, and the war sputters out."
"I don't trust you, Per."
As if I didn't know. If he wasn't so potentially useful, I would have been irritated. "That feeling is emphatically mutual. I am a slave while he is in your world; you know as much. I want him gone. There is no profit in wanton destruction." Attractive as that is, in its proper proportion.
There it was, the hair-thin crack in the center of this hunter. Not the chink that would allow me inside, but a different, infinitesimal sliver. The fools want to be heroes. It spurs them to great heights, and curses them to fall inevitably short.
"Profit. Your guiding star." His irises darkened, and I did not let the welling excitement show. I let him struggle with himself. It takes longer with hunters, of course, and I had watched and discarded so many prospects already. Patience is not the only virtue, but it is the one most conducive to doing business. "All right, Per. Give the details."
"I'll need bare skin." I showed my teeth. "A little kiss, a little pain, and you'll be ever so much stronger. Then, all you must do is injure me."
"That would be a pleasure," he muttered, his right hand tensing and flexing as if he felt a throat under it.
Oh, he was a joy to behold. I tut-tutted, waving one long, thin index finger. "Not yet, mein Herr. Wait until you hear the planes."
