Page 77 of Night of the Witch
“Kommandant, I am sorry, but first, I must speak to the priest.”
Dieter shifts, and I can see the doubt painting across his features.
“I must go back inside,” I say earnestly. I even open the door again, and the priest looks up at me from his prayers, curious that we’ve lingered. “I need to confess. It is too great an honor to light the fires with any sin upon my soul.”
“Kapitän Ernst,” Dieter says flatly, “do you not think the archbishop can hear your confession just as well?”
Shit.
I stare at him blankly, unable to come up with a lie quick enough to get me out of this.
And then Dieter shrugs. “Do as you will,” he says as if he doesn’t care. “Just be at the cathedral at least an hour before.”
“I will,” I lie.
And he walks away. I turn and reenter the church.
“You seek a confession, my son?” the priest asks.
“No,” I say without looking at him.
I head straight to the stairs, descending down and down into the depths of the water system below the streets. I’m running before the first turn inthe tunnel. I’m not even halfway to the basilica when the midmorning bells start tolling, the sound a cacophony that reaches even below ground. I race through water, splashing and cursing, but I know—
I’m not going to make it in time.
23
FRITZI
I grab Jochen’s arm.
He tenses beneath my fingers as the screaming of a hundred midmorning bells overlaps across the city, yanking the murmurs in this prison to utter silence. All of us are away from the left edge of the cell; it is obvious that we are grouped together, and we are one mass, one breath held, one cluster of equal parts dread and hope.
The bells cease.
Silence hangs dense and choking, and I lick my dry lips.
The floor is still intact.
No.My chest buckles. No, no—Dieter caught on to our plan. He has Otto, he has Otto the same place he has Liesel, and he’ll destroy them both—
“Calm,” Jochen whispers to me. “Calm, Fräulein—”
I am shaking where I hold him, shaking because eyes are turning to me now in growing distrust. This woman came into their cell, the sister of the kommandant, and she lied, didn’t she? She led everyone to believe in salvation, but there will be no salvation, no escape.
A few of their accusation-heated gazes pin on me in funnels of violence. These people have nothing to lose now, and I gave them false hope.
How many minutes have passed since the bells stopped? Five? Ten?
Footsteps bound up the hall along with gruff laughing, a barked command.
“Begin manacling them,” a jäger out of sight orders. He’s coming closer; they all are, keys rattling to unlock our cell. “It’s time to get these—”
The floor blasts upward with a shuddering, percussive explosion.
Screams tear through the crowd, and where we were pressed together already, bodies shove closer, scrambling for cover as rocks and pebbles and debris erupt in a clouded spray.
My ears ring, eyes blurred with soot and the air clouded with dust, but I shove into the crowd without hesitation.
