Wolf by Wolf

  No sign of needles, but Yael knew they were there. The needles were the reason she’d come—followed the rabbit trail of Germania’s black-market contacts.

  “What kind of piece are you looking for?” the man spoke slowly. Even his steps were cautious as he paced the cramped room. (Everyone in Germania walked on eggshells. Whether their transactions were legal or not.) “I have some landscapes. Portraits. Charcoal, acrylic, oil.”

  He was a real artist. Most of those did not exist anymore. The Führer—still high and bitter from his artistic failures in Vienna—had quickly gutted the Reich of any true masterpieces. Yael could see this man’s talent in the nearest open sketchbook. A nude sat, bare-backed, looking over her shoulder. There was care in the artist’s lines—they swooped and curved gentle as a lover’s touch.

  “I was looking for something more… permanent. Something in ink.” She recited the words her last contact had instructed her to say.

  “I see.” The artist stopped pacing. “Follow me, then.”

  It was little more than a closet—covered up by a false panel and a rack of heavy coats. Inside was a chair, bottles of ink, a tray like the unsmiling nurse’s: full of gauze and swabs and sterile.

  And the needle. It was more complex than the one that stabbed Yael’s numbers in: with springs and screws and a long, steady grip. It almost didn’t look like a needle at all. But the point was still there. Waiting to dig and pierce. Slide into her skin.

  “What is it you want?” The artist walked over to the tray and picked up the needle. It must have been heavy, yet he held it the way he might handle a brush. Graceful.

  Yael took off her jacket. Peeled back her shirtsleeve. She held her left arm out, just as she had so many times on Vlad’s table. She stared at the artist and his needle.

  The artist looked at her numbers. His slight face tilted to the side. As if he were inspecting a painting, every brushstroke and highlight. Every sloppy, wavering, permanent line. He stared so long that her arm started to ache.

  But Yael kept it straight. Her hand did not shake.

  “I’ve seen these before,” he said finally, “but never on such a pretty blond.”

  “Can you cover it?” she asked.

  The artist shoved his wire-framed glasses up the slightness of his nose. “Of course. Have you thought about a design?”

  She had. The decision hadn’t been hard.

  “I want wolves.” The animal that carried the Valkyrie Gunnr into battle. Creatures made of freedom and fierce. Who could survive alone, but howled—always cried for their pack.

  “How many?”

  “Five.” Four for her ghosts and one for Vlad. So she would always remember to face down the sights.

  “That will take a good deal of time. Several visits.” The artist frowned and held the needle high. It glinted in the closet’s bare bulb light, like some cursed fairy-tale spindle. “There will be a lot of pain involved. And then there’s the matter of money.”

  “I’ll pay it all,” she said.

  Yael dug a wad of Reichsmarks from the depths of her jacket. Months’ worth of stipend, still held together with the brass clip Reiniger had slid on when he handed it to her and said, “Don’t spend it all at once.”

  It was a lot of money. Even by black-market standards. The artist didn’t even count it. Just the thickness of the bills was enough. He gestured to the seat.

  “Wolves. Five wolves,” the artist said, mostly to himself, as Yael slipped into the chair. He set the needle down for a moment, replacing it with a sketchbook and charcoal. His hand sketched the creatures with quick care. Five wolves. Swooping, wild, elegant. Made up of many, many, many lines. “You’re certain this is the design you want?”

  Yael nodded.

  “Just let me know when to start.”

  Yael looked at the numbers for the last time. She looked at the artist’s hand—tense with future wolf-lines—as he retrieved the needle and held it just above her veins. Sharp but steady.

  Just like her arm.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  NOW

  Remember and be rended.

  (You must be broken to be fixed.)

  Remember and be rendered.

  Babushka—the one who gave her purpose.

  Mama—the one who gave her life.

  Miriam—the one who gave her freedom.

  Aaron-Klaus—the one who gave her a mission.

  Vlad—the one who gave her pain.

  These were the names she whispered in the dark.

  These were the pieces she brought back into place.

  These were the wolves she rode to war.

  CHAPTER 34

  NOW

  APRIL 2, 1956

  THE IMPERIAL PALACE TOKYO, JAPAN

  Why is this night different from all other nights?

  This was a question from another time, another place. Living in one of Yael’s rare-photograph memories. The scene was traced in black and white—the dark ghetto night warded off by the stubs of candles her mother lit. It was a desperate Passover, Yael’s last. (The train came that autumn.) Gray faces lined the seder table, taking in a meager meal. All was not right, but they sat anyway. Filling the night with stories of Exodus and freedom.

  Yael was the youngest at the table, and the duty of reciting the Mah Nishtanah fell to her. Its first words were Why is this night different from all other nights?

  This was a question from another time, another place, but it rose up in Yael now, as she stood at the entrance to the ballroom. Met with an answer from the wholeness of herself.

  Tonight death is at Hitler’s door. And I am the one to bear it.

  I have always been the one to bear it.

  Yael could not find her breath as the announcer called out their arrival, “Presenting the victor of the tenth Axis Tour, Luka Wotan Löwe, and his escort, Miss Adele Valerie Wolfe.”

  Luka offered her his left arm, like some lost gentlemanly soul from Prussia’s Junker class. He even looked the part: smooth chin, hair tied back, uniform starched. He wore his jacket, but even that had been treated—conditioned and oiled so the cracks were hardly visible. The leather of his sleeve felt butter-soft as Yael wrapped her fingers around his inner elbow and stepped into the ballroom.

  A quick sweep of the area showed Yael her target had not yet arrived. The world might be dying, but the ballroom of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace was very much alive: woven through with color and music and laughter. Its ceilings flowered like a garden above them, each golden tile painted with a different plant. Red camellias, lilies with petals like fire, hives of purple erica, pink peonies, stars of edelweiss. Crystal chandeliers lit the crowd of dress uniforms and silk kimonos below.

  Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako were the first to greet them. With highest honors and smiles. The meeting was brief, the duty of gracious hosts.

  As soon as Yael and Luka left the emperor and his wife, the racers were swarmed with humanity—the edited version. Only the finest of features and genes. It was brownshirts for the most part. Men whose names were pinned like an afterthought at the end of long, involved military titles. Their swastikas danced around the pair as they shook Luka’s hand and nodded admiringly at the Iron Crosses around his neck. (X over X. Crossing each other out.)

  For men who’d done such horrible things, their conversation was as mundane as mud. (“The weather here is delightful, isn’t it?” “So, Victor Löwe, what are your prospects after this?” “You’ve never been to Lake Zell in the summer? You absolutely must!”) This made it easy for Yael to tune out their voices as she watched the doorway for new guests. Her heart thudded taiko drumbeats at every fresh name the announcer called. There were couples from Tokyo’s high society and Japanese generals. There were racing officials and more brownshirts.

  But never him.

  The room was getting crowded. Yael made note of every camera lens. (There were six, set up in a star formation from various points in the room, meant to catch every moment of th
e Victor’s Ball, every angle.) She’d have to time the event just right… in view of most cameras, but close to the edge of the room. By a door, or even a window. There were two main exits (one south end, one west end), but that was where most of the guards would be. The row of windows on the ballroom’s east side would be her best bet.

  “You look like you’re about to cut and run.” Luka leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Am I such a terrible date?”

  There was a break in the swarm around them, Yael realized. The general buzz of the ballroom had faded.

  Luka didn’t seem to notice. He kept talking to himself, via her. “I won’t lie. I feel the same way. Not really my scene.” He tugged at his uniform’s collar. The crosses jangled heavy around his neck. “God, I want a smoke.”

  The announcer had been silent for over a minute now. And the ballroom doors, Yael noted, were shut, which meant something, someone, was brewing behind them.

  This was it. She could feel it in her bones, leaking, rising, lava-hot.

  She could feel him. Just on the other side. His presence was so powerful that it preceded his body, entrancing the room. Most of the crowd was silent now. Staring at the door, expectant, waiting…

  “I’d appreciate if you let my arm survive the evening.” It was only after Luka hissed this that Yael realized she was still hanging on to his elbow, her fingernails punching deep into his jacket.

  When Yael let go, she did not know what to do with her hands. They were itching, itching, twitching for a weapon, but it was not time yet. So she folded her palms into themselves. Still her nails dug deep.

  “Seems like you could use a smoke, too,” Luka muttered.

  “No smoke,” Yael said. “No more smoke.”

  The room was so quiet, so ready, that they could hear the breath the announcer took before his next brazen words. “Presenting the Führer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.”

  The doors opened.

  He was so wreathed by SS that Yael could hardly see him at first. The bodyguards surrounded the Führer like a quarantine. An impenetrable wall of black uniforms and guns, shielding him from the diseased populace. But the ring widened as Adolf Hitler stepped into the room.

  And there he was. Not black and white. Not some disembodied voice. Not a face on a poster. But the man himself. Monster in the flesh.

  Most people applauded his arrival. Yael’s nails only dug deeper.

  The Führer walked straight toward them.

  He was not a large man. In fact, Yael stood a couple centimeters taller than him in Adele Wolfe’s body. Their eyes were almost level, colliding when Yael looked at him. His irises were blue. The shade of a sky scraped bare and a skeleton soul. The color of veins just beneath skin, needle-ready. A current like blood ran through them—something sparking, which spoke of red, red words.

  The rest of him seemed almost dull in comparison.

  During his Chancellery Chats the Führer was all brimstone and blazing fire. But here, in front of her, under the golden shimmer of the ballroom ceiling, he looked faded. There were so many things the Reichssender cameras did not show. Silver bristled through his mustache, frosted his hairline and its neat part. The kind of gut that comes with age pressed against the buttons of his brown shirt. Lines creased and crept and webbed along his eye sockets.

  He was an old man now: sixty-six. He’d lived so much longer than so many.

  Yael’s stomach churned. Her bones leaked acid like a busted battery.

  “My congratulations again, Victor Löwe,” the Führer said as soon as he stopped, keeping some distance and guards between them. “The Double Cross is no small feat. You are a fine specimen of the Aryan ideal. Strong, resourceful, cunning. The New Order needs men such as yourself as leaders of the next generation.”

  Luka’s head dipped in a way that could be interpreted as a nod. His crosses clashed against each other, into his chest. “It was my duty to race, mein Führer.”

  Deeper, deeper dug Yael’s nails.

  “Perhaps your next duty is at the Chancellery. Once you return to Germania, I’ll have my people get in touch with you regarding a position.”

  This time Luka did not nod. He did not smile at all. “Yes, mein Führer.”

  Adolf Hitler did not smile back either. It wasn’t until he turned to Yael that his thin lips even hinted at emotion.

  “Victor Wolfe. I’m very pleased you’re here. I hope to see much more of you this evening.” His words weren’t red or rough when he spoke to her. He sounded civil, even friendly, even more than friendly.

  She’s pretty and blond. She could hear Vlad now, grumbling over his cup of spiked tea. Just his type.

  It took all of Yael’s training not to stab the Führer there and then. (Not that she hadn’t thought about it. It would have been impractical; there were still SS guards between them and too many faces blocking the cameras.) She did the impossible instead: She smiled and fluttered her pale, pale eyelashes, the way she supposed schoolgirls did when they caught sight of their sweethearts.

  “It’s an honor to see you again, mein Führer. I quite enjoyed our evening last year.”

  Now he smiled. His lips formed a perfect bell curve—a whole distribution of emotions, intent.

  “Will you dance with me tonight?” he asked.

  Yael opened her palm—she had to stop digging before she hit blood, before everything spilled out at the wrong time—and replied, “It would be my greatest pleasure.”

  Beside her, Luka fell victim to a coughing fit that twisted his face and rattled his lungs. Yael could hardly tell if it was real or not.

  “Are you all right, Victor Löwe?” The Führer’s concern fell flat. As if he was reciting lines. His eyes glinted something feral while he watched the boy.

  “Too many cigarettes,” Yael said.

  Luka stopped coughing. The look he gave her was brilliant, a masterpiece of wrath and emotions: That-was-our-secret mixed with hell’s-frozen-over and a dash of go-to-hell and fine-be-his-Aryan-morality-lapdog-for-all-I-care.

  That should teach him not to cheat.

  The Führer looked disgusted. “The vice of lesser races, planted to sabotage the bodily purity of the Aryan. I do hope you aren’t partial to smoking, Victor Wolfe.”

  Yael stared straight into those witching eyes and wondered if he’d ever seen it—the billowing black being pulled out of the death camp’s smokestacks like intestines. A never-ending gutting.

  “I find it repulsive,” she told him with a smile (even though her own insides felt drawn and quartered).

  The evening moved along, into hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, toasts waxing poetic on Victor Löwe’s strength, a formal dinner in an adjoining room with adjoining cameras. Luka maintained a sour expression throughout all of these. The Führer kept his bodyguards close. And the acid black in Yael’s bones kept bubbling, rising.

  Then finally the dancing.

  The first dance belonged to the victor. Luka’s arms were stiff around her when they took to the floor. Yael gripped the edges of her left sleeve as she placed that arm on Luka’s shoulder (she did not want the silk falling away again, exposing her fresh bandages). It wasn’t really a proper waltz (it couldn’t be with the constraints of the kimono). More of a spinning around on the floor in tiny, awkward steps. They danced for over a minute before Luka finally spoke.

  “So, when’s the wedding?” There was a taunt in his voice that was a little too vicious. Too real. “Am I invited?”

  He was talking about her and the Führer, Yael realized. At least it meant her flirtations had come off as genuine.

  “You’re jealous.” She laughed.

  “Are you really so surprised?” He was dead serious. Those lion-smart eyes were softer than she’d ever seen them. His hand was light, light on her waist. “Do you really not know?”

  Yael did know. And it amazed her that, even though there was a sorceress’s boil of anger and hurt in her chest, the boy in the brown jacket could still find a heartstring. Tug
it. Make her feel something else…

  —STOP—

  —THIS IS NOT WHY YOU’RE HERE—

  She was slipping away again. Becoming someone she wasn’t. Someone Luka cared for long before Yael stole her face.

  She tried to tell him as much. Let him (and, in many ways, herself) down easy. “Luka. I—I’m not someone you’ll ever be able to love.”

  But no was not an answer Luka Löwe was used to swallowing. “I know you’ve sworn off marriage and the Lebensborn, but I promise it would be different with me. I tried moving on after last year. But every girl I met was boring, dull as a bovine. You challenge me, Adele. You always have.”

  As soft as Luka’s eyes were, his face was even softer. The features that could make one hundred thousand German maidens swoon were molded by so many emotions, so much hardness melting away.

  “You’re wrong,” he whispered. “There is no one else.”

  Scheisse! Was he… proposing?

  She needed to put a stop to this. Quickly. Before the Reichssender cameras caught whiff of it. Before the entire ballroom oohed and aahed and any chance she had at dancing with the Führer was ruined.

  “We’ll never be able to trust each other,” she said.

  “Nonsense.” Luka shook his head. “We’re even now. Remember?”

  Her no had to be stronger than this. Hope-shattering. Something Luka would not come back from. At least for a few minutes.

  “I do not love you.” Yael didn’t have the heart to look at Luka when she said this. (Or maybe, once again, she had too much heart.) She looked at the ring of spectators instead. Found him. The one she was heartless for. “And I never will.”

  Luka’s arms grew rigid, but he kept moving. Performing the choreography of the dance. He spun her around so she could no longer see the Führer. Yael stared up at the ceiling instead, studying the bonsai cypress tree painted on the tile directly above them.

  “You always did have your sights set high.” His voice stung. A maskless hurt.