Page 43 of Geist Fleisch
“Your master doesn’t like how you taste?” Callum asked.
“Be silent! They…” Heinrich’s grimace softened as the gentle green light filled the room, revealing the figures of the Brownshirts, each now up and about, eyes shrouded in the same green mist. Each and every pair of those eyes was on Heinrich.
“You’re here,” Heinrich whispered, his face full of joy once more. “You’ve come.”
One of the Brownshirts said something to Heinrich so soft and fast, Callum couldn’t catch it, much less understand. Then, another spoke, just as inscrutable as the first. He turned to Jacqueline for translation, or at least some clue, but she was nowhere to be found. He was alone in a room with a supernatural cultist and a troop of Nazis possessed by a warmongering god.
Callum watched the Brownshirts draw closer and closer to their servant, until the brush of flesh on his hand made himflinch. Quickly and silently, the hand gripped his, giving him a gentle squeeze before its owner added his own line to the incantation. There was something familiar about that squeeze, and that voice.
As his comrades circled Heinrich in their newly borrowed bodies, Max remained at Callum’s side, Heinrich safely distracted from either of them as the ghosts knelt to entertain the man’s delusion. Callum clutched Max’s hand tightly as Ferdi and the others caressed Heinrich’s face, throat and chest, his muscular arms and shoulders, laying him down on the floor, where he surrendered fully to the god that had not come.
Ferdi was right. For them, there would be no more gods. No more masters.
Max held Callum close as faint sighs of pleasure filled the darkness. Slowly, they turned, dancing to music neither one could hear. Heinrich’s sighs became gasps, then cries, then screams as Max tried to shield Callum’s eyes from the ghosts now tearing Heinrich apart. Callum couldn’t resist, watching them tear at flesh with their bare hands. But even he had to look away as one brought down a blade to sever Heinrich’s foot at the calf, and Heinrich’s scream filled the room.
Ernst was a cunt.
Callum didn’t dare look back until all was quiet. When he did, he barely recognised the creature that had been Heinrich. With a solemnity that belied their viciousness, the ghosts cast the remains into the doorway like wood on a fire, at last stepping back as the tendrils of light emerged again, tentative as stray cats lured from their hiding place with scraps of fresh meat. One by one, they wrapped themselves lovingly around the ghosts’ host bodies, even as one of those bodies lingered back.
“That’s our ride home,” came Ferdi’s warm voice through the smiling, bloodied lips of the bearded man Callum had thrown into the mirror. “Don’t keep him long.” He didn’t pester Callum and Max further, allowing one of the tendrils to grasp him as it had the others.
Callum and Max stared at each other, a fine pair, the disappearing man and the ghost possessing a Nazi. Callum tried to ignore the short, dull haircut, the grizzled, unshaven jaw and the slightly bent nose that looked nothing like Max. Did it matter what Max looked like? Or what Callum looked like… or didn’t?
“Come?” Callum took both the man’s hands in his and squeezed, until Max drew near enough for their lips to touch, one long kiss completing their sweet illusion,FleischuponFleischone last time. Far from the bitter taste of this stranger, the kiss was all Max in its tenderness, and for one fleeting second as he withdrew, the ghost looked like himself.
“Yes,” Max said, grinning as the last tendril wrapped itself around his host body. “I know you will come.”
Callum watched the thing pull Max’s spirit through the doorway, just as it had Ferdi and the others, leaving their mortal shells behind. Their farewell had lasted only a moment, but it was long enough for Callum to promise himself—and Max—that he would return to Berlin, to the bar within Suzi’s, where Max would be waiting.
With the last tendril gone, the opening vanished, returning the room to its ordinary state. The winter sun warmed its windows, lighting the bewildered Nazis, who stood covered top to toe in Heinrich’s blood. Knowing he was barely visible, Callum watched from the shadows as each man began to burn, then melt within his clothes. Two of the men ran for the front door, screaming as they went. The man whose body Max hadborrowed lifted his pistol and ended it quickly, while the others were puddles of charred flesh, bone, and cloth before they could find their weapons. A ghost was not meant to share the body of a mortal man, though as Callum now understood, he was no mortal man.
“Boys leave such a mess.” Jacqueline tutted at the remains as she emerged from the shadows.
“Thanks.” Callum resisted a sneer. “You were a great help.”
“Frank’s alive, isn’t he?”
“Is he?”
“I believe so.” Jacqueline reached into the hole that had started all the trouble, lifted a small metal ball from it and put it in Callum’s hand. “Though the next time you see Frank, he won’t remember you, and he won’t be him.”
Callum turned the perfectly smooth orb in his fingers, fearing he’d break it. “You don’t mean… he’s this?”
“No,” Jacqueline smiled. “He will be human. But this will help you find each other. Then, our work can continue.”
“You just said he wouldn’t remember.”
“That’s right. Nor will I, and nor will Robert. Memories can be a dangerous thing. Sometimes losing them is the best thing you can do.” She gently closed his fingers over the ball. “Robert will be here soon with all the information you need.”
“Information?” Callum shook his head. “Ourwork? I’m not a part of this!”
“Then why didn’t you go with Max? Disappear into nothing?”
“I…” Callum thought back to his conversation with Heinrich in the snowy Tiergarten. The man had asked what he mostdesired in the world. But what did he most fear? He looked around at the remains that dotted the room. “We should—”
“Don’t worry. The Institute will have to clean up more than this before it moves on. It can’t stay in Berlin now, any more than we can. Magnus and Karl have known this for some time.”
“I don’t give a damn about Magnus and Karl. What are you talking about?”
