Page 39 of Geist Fleisch
Before he could ask what Max meant, Callum felt himself vibrating from head to toe. He felt like he was about to vomit, which in this place, on a mostly empty stomach, more likely meant blood than bile. The sight of young men enjoying a night of revelry and dancing in each other’s arms faded, replaced by grim Brownshirts in all their performative bravado, their sleeves encircled by the red and white bands and broken black cross of their ideology. He was back in the world of the living, and Max was nowhere to be seen.
For a moment, the Nazis, the women, and Callum just stared at each other, awed by Callum’s sudden reappearance. If the men had doubted the existence of a hidden ghost bar before, they didn’t now.
Without a word, the man guarding Brigitte pulled out his revolver and shot the fellow next to him clean through the head. A spattering of gore hit Suzi’s floor seconds before the thug’s body collapsed after it. The other Brownshirts stared, dumbstruck.
Max! Having possessed the shooter, Max took aim at the one guarding Anne and put a bullet in the man’s shoulder, before three shots from another man standing by the bar took his mortal host down.
Brigitte, meanwhile, had dived beneath the nearest table, while Anne and Suzi had each incapacitated their captors with solid elbows to the groin that granted them precious seconds to escape. One man fired several shots at them as they found cover behind the bar. Callum, meanwhile, took shelter behind a table. He saw a bullet graze Brigitte’s shoulder.
“Nein!” shouted Rohm, grabbing the wrist of the man who’d injured Brigitte and snatching the gun from him. More furious shouts followed as Rohm tried to get his remaining men under control, his piggish nostrils flaring. He needed Brigitte and Callum alive, at least.
A loud crash announced the breaking of the lock on the front door. Robert’s auburn hair glowed in the streetlight as he surveyed the chaos. Without warning, several of the Brownshirts raised their guns and fired, plugging Robert’s body with four fresh wounds. Robert frowned at his ruined shirt and closed the door behind him as the humans watched in horror. When one at last shouted at him, Robert barely seemed to pay attention.
“I came down here tonight to fuck men and kill Nazis,” Robert said, taking in the room. “And I don’t see any men.”
The bloody chaos of shots accompanied the smell of gunpowder mingled with fresh blood, liquor from bottles shattered by stray bullets and raw panic. Every instinct told Callum to get as far from the place as possible, but not without Anne. He cast a glance at Brigitte, who clutched her arm in the relative safety of her hiding spot. She nodded toward the bar, mouthing ‘GO’ as Callum charged past two wiry Brownshirts like a rugby player. As he neared the bar and moved to vault it, an unseen force—Robert, he guessed—aided his momentum, then was gone just as fast. Anne and Suzi scrambled to his side as hehit the floor, ducking a shower of glass and liquor from another broken bottle.
“Callum,” Anne breathed, catching his translucent hand in hers. “What’s happened to you?”
He shook his head, vehemently, hoping it could still be seen. “We need to get out. On three!”
Suzi muttered something that sounded an awful lot like ‘fuck three’ before leading them to a curtain just four feet high. She pulled it back to reveal a small door.
“Wait,” Callum looked back at Brigitte. But the witch had already thrown open the front door and disappeared into the night.
Robert slammed the door after her and skewered Rohm’s beady eyes with talon-like fingers that went right through his spectacles. The man gave one last scream before Robert took hold of his overgrown throat and tore it open, tossing the entrails to the floor. Robert then dived on the throat of another terrified Nazi, whose gut exploded with bullets as one of his comrades tried to shoot the creature that was quickly turning their unit intoWeisswurst.Following Suzi and Anne, Callum left their shouts and screams, along with the scents of blood, gunfire and death behind. As they emerged into a grimy, empty storeroom and then the snowy alley behind the bar, Callum hoped the bloody scene hadn’t manifested for the spirits. Either way, Max and his comrades would be safe enough, for now.
Suzi engaged Anne in a slew of furious German as Anne, in English, implored Callum to explain what was going on. As if he had answers that would make any sense to her! He heard the wordsdie Grünerseveral times from Suzi, which Anne clumsily translated for him as slang for ‘police.’ Police? Not bloody likely!With what Suzi and Anne had just seen, could he take them to Frank? To the Institute? Hell, if not there, where?
“Come on!” At least on the street they could hail a cab, though probably not one whose driver was used to men literally fading before their eyes.
“Darling, what’s going on?” Anne asked again. “Callum! What’s happening to you? I can’t—”
“We have to go! I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Where?”
They jumped as a figure in a dark coat appeared before them, his pale face streaked with blood as he sucked yet more of it from his fingers with orgasmic relish.
“Mmmm,” Robert moaned. “Waste not.”
Suzi and Anne backed away, eyes wide at the sight of the creature licking blood from its claws in the guise of man as handsome as any about town… except for his clothes, now drenched with Nazi gore.
Robert’s smile made it clear he was enjoying the theatrics as much as the flavour. “Frank needs you, now.”
“Me?” Callum asked.
“Your unique skill set, anyway.” Robert pointed to Callum’s disappeared hand. “You can hide your clothes in the alley, there. I’ll see that your friends get home safe.”
As Robert put a hand on each of Anne and Suzi’s shoulders, the two women stood entranced, like they'd been placed under some serene spell, which may have been more accurate than Callum wanted to admit.
“I’ll take them,” Callum said. “You go help Frank.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said Frank needs you. I can obfuscate myself to some extent. But you, Englishman, were born to it. The man currently holding Frank hostage is also an acquaintance of yours.”
Heinrich. Callum cursed his own stupidity. “All right.”
“Do you want to say goodbye?” Robert asked. “I doubt she’ll remember, but just in case.”
