The Shadow War Read online

  Daniel’s fingertips came between their faces against the truck door, and he pressed his palm right beside Liam’s. Liam imagined a faint current jumping between them. “Then I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Liam let out his breath in a rush.

  They stayed there for a moment, the tension unwinding in Liam’s chest as Daniel studied him with fresh eyes. Behind Daniel, a faint blush of violet was creeping up the eastern sky. With a nod, Daniel pushed off of the truck, then swung up into the cab. “It’s probably better if you drive, in case we’re stopped on the road. You look like one of them.”

  Liam nodded, mouth too thick to say more. His body was tingling. One threat had passed. But there were plenty still ahead.

  Daniel dug around the steering column and tinkered with the electrical wiring. “It’ll all be over the minute you open your mouth, but you can buy me some time.”

  “What’re you gonna do, jump out and slit their throats?” Liam asked. A flush climbed Daniel’s neck, and Liam couldn’t help it—he laughed. “That really is your solution to everything, isn’t it?”

  Daniel grinned, and it lit up Liam’s insides—there was one smile earned. “It’s worked well so far.”

  After a few hesitant chugs, the engine sputtered to life. Liam raised one eyebrow, impressed. “Are you a mechanic or something?”

  “Violist.” Daniel swung back out of the cab, long fingers lingering on the door handle. “Let’s get you a uniform.”

  By dawn, they woke Rebeka and loaded the supplies. She hid in the truck’s bed while Daniel and Liam took the cab. The drive was deceptively easy, despite the black carrion shadows cast by the Luftwaffe planes constantly roaring overhead. Liam kept up a nervous stream of conversation as they went: the principles of energy and matter, mostly, because they were what he knew best and because Daniel asked. After a ten-minute lecture on Pauli’s exclusion principle—two bodies cannot occupy the same quantum state at once—he stopped himself abruptly, a rush of heat taking over his face.

  “Why did you stop? You care about your work,” Daniel murmured, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

  “I forget sometimes that no one else gives a fuck.”

  “They should, though.” Daniel’s fingers pressed a chord against his own thigh and quivered it in a vibrato. “It’s how I feel about music. I don’t even need to play the leading line. Violas never do.” His fingers danced up and down, and Liam wished, briefly, they were dancing on his skin instead. “It is enough to give the melody its scaffold.”

  “You don’t want to be the star sometimes?”

  Daniel paused, smashed his fingers into a fist. “That makes it harder to hide.”

  Liam swallowed his gut response: It’d be a shame to hide you. Clumsy at best. And untrue. If the world were safe for Daniel, they wouldn’t be here. Daniel wouldn’t be shrinking, shrinking down from the windows, tucking knives inside his boot as he whispered what sounded like a vengeful prayer. Liam stayed silent the rest of the way and only stole furtive glances at the dark-eyed, rangy boy beside him.

  They reached the outskirts of Siegen sometime around noon, the clusters of wood and whitewashed cottages huddled under a smoky sky that threatened rain. Just beneath the road sign welcoming him to Siegen, a rusted sign warned, JEWS ENTER AT THEIR OWN RISK. He glanced over at Daniel, but he’d fallen asleep, head lolling against Liam’s shoulder.

  “Daniel,” Liam murmured. He tried to match the German cadence Daniel had used when he introduced himself, and savored the way it rolled on his tongue. “Daniel. We’re almost there.”

  Daniel jerked up, sucking down air like he’d been drowning. He’d half pulled his knife from his belt before he took in his surroundings. “Ach, I’m so sorry. I haven’t slept like that in . . .” He shook his head, collecting himself, then slid open the panel to the cargo hold. “I’ll wake Rebeka and get in position.”

  Liam watched him climb through the panel for a second, then tightened his grip on the thin steering wheel, fingers wrapping all the way around. As his nails dug into his palms, he opened himself once more to the dark and dismal place. He’d been pulling from it every few hours, drawing out what he could, but now it was time for the final charge. The shadows suffused him, frothing and pulsing, before he tapered off his draw on them and closed the rift again.

  His biggest challenge yet. He laughed to himself, body bristling with electric anticipation. He was ready. Holding the shadows inside for so long—it was both exhilarating and terrifying. Comforting and restrictive, like a heavy winter blanket. It both dulled and sharpened his senses like the buzz of a first drink. He craved this. He needed this. And the book—the book could give him more.

  He adjusted his officer’s cap, sat up as straight as he could—trying to look anything more than his eighteen years of age—and cranked the driver’s side window down.

  “Your name?” the guard asked.

  Liam smiled, toothy, shadows deep and thick as oil around him. No other guards in the gatehouse. Abruptly, the shadows flowed over the windowsill and slipped into the guard’s ears, his nose, snaring him before he could react.

  “Sturmbannführer Junker.”

  Liam, the shadows whispered. Faint as spider’s silk, but there all the same. Liam tightened his grip on the steering wheel and ignored them. There was nothing to fear. He was in control.

  Pure black eyes stared back at Liam as the guard waved him through.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DANIEL

  Daniel shouldn’t have wedged behind the crates with Rebeka. The cramped space was too much—all he could imagine were the walls squeezing in, his lungs full of lead while his body was on fire. He was back on the train to Łódź, pinned in by sixty or seventy other bodies. His viola case had been ripped from his hands by the sheer mass of humans as the SS soldiers herded them aboard, leaving him with nothing but the clothes he wore. Rebeka had clung to his sleeve, and he’d clung to Ari’s; their mother shed silent tears somewhere nearby, too far away to touch.

  But who had Ari clung to when the next trains came? Had their mother held him all the way to Chełmno? Had they smelled it, the same thing he and Rebeka smelled when they stowed away on the passenger train—the stink of exhaust and burning flesh? Daniel smelled it again now, smelled it clinging to him, all over his skin and hair, as if he’d been buried alive with all those corpses. Like he would have been, if he and Rebeka hadn’t run.

  Rebeka took his hand and squeezed.

  Daniel squeezed back as the truck stopped, channeling every last bit of his terror through their linked hands. It had to go somewhere. Any minute now, the guards would be poking around the wheel wells. He should be hearing the dogs’ snouts snuffling on the other side of the canvas covering. But there was only stillness. No movement. The dull patter of Liam’s German, too warm and chewy to fool anyone.

  Daniel reached for the knife he’d taken from an SS officer’s corpse. Meine Ehre heißt Treue, the blade read. My honor is loyalty. He liked the idea of the Nazis’ own motto, declaring their unwavering conviction, being the last thing they saw before he slit their throats. A reminder that for fascism, there was only one cure.

  The truck eased back into gear and moved forward.

  Rebeka and Daniel exhaled as one, and he let go of the dagger’s handle. “Looks like your American might know what he’s doing after all,” she said.

  “He isn’t my American.” But Daniel couldn’t keep a flush of pride from his tone.

  “You like him, though.”

  Daniel glanced at her sideways. They’d never discussed it before, the way he always made excuses when her unmarried friends invited him to dinner. Rebeka was too observant, though, for her own good. She always seemed to know things without being told.

  “He’s very . . . determined.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Like you.”

  Determined, and a little fr
ightening. Being around Liam and his chaotic energy felt like standing outside in a thunderstorm. He was obsessive, relentless, clever—and yet beneath it beat a fragile heart that truly wanted to do some good. It pained Daniel how much he could relate to that, how much he wanted to see Liam pull off his crazy scheme. And what he’d said that morning—his confession offered like a secret handshake . . .

  But it didn’t matter. There could be nothing waiting for Daniel on the other side of vengeance. Siegen was just one step closer to the end: to finding Kreutzer, Gerstein, Himmler, and the rest. His purpose would be served.

  The panel to the front cab cracked open. “Get ready,” Liam said.

  They shimmied out from behind the crates and gathered up their equipment. When they’d stolen this truck a few weeks ago, they’d been dismayed to find most of the food inside was potted meat of uncertain but vaguely porcine origin, which seemed cruel enough the Nazis must have done it on purpose. The crates of dehydrated milk helped, but after two weeks, Daniel would have gladly starved rather than force another draft of powdery dairy-water down his throat. He jammed the lid back on the crate where they’d stashed oats from the sheep barn and inventoried his gear.

  Sidearm: three bullets in the chamber and a handful more in his pocket. Overcoat. Slender wooden box, the only real possession Rebeka had grabbed from their room in Łódź as they fled. He felt foolish—their parents had hidden it in their jewelry box, after all, rather than nailing to their doorway—but keeping their great-grandparents’ mezuzah near his heart let him pretend their family was alive and protected still.

  Rebeka pulled her knit cap low over her brow and gave him a nod. God, that girl was ready for any of his stupid schemes. After this, he’d have to get her further west, toward safety. He couldn’t let her tag along with him toward the end.

  Shadows slid over the weak light that had softened the truck’s canvas top, and they crawled to a stop. It was just like any other errand he’d run back in Berlin, he told himself. Gather everything he needed and get out without making eye contact. Only instead of picking up bow rosin and matzo meal, there were men he needed to kill.

  He checked the bullet chamber on his P38 and took a deep breath.

  The door to the cab slammed shut, and Liam’s footsteps circled the truck. There was a low exchange in German, then a single soft tap against the side of the bed: Liam’s signal. Only one guard, then. A the smile spread across Daniel’s face.

  “Yes, if you must, it’s right in here,” Liam was saying. His German accent was slightly better, thanks to Daniel’s coaching, but it wouldn’t get them far. “Step inside—”

  The truck bed shuddered as the guard climbed in.

  He was just on the other side of the crates. Daniel could hear him breathing, a slight, huffy sound, like the damp autumn air wasn’t agreeing with him. It always pleased Daniel to remember the Nazis were humans—not that they were deserving of empathy, but that they breathed, they got sick, they too could be weak or dumb. They had soft tissue and organs that rarely tolerated bullets and blades.

  Daniel stepped out behind the guard as soon as he passed the stack of crates and wrapped his free arm around the man’s mouth. Before the thought to scream could even form in the guard’s brain, Daniel’s knife punctured his throat.

  A quick slash was too good for him. He dug deeper and twisted the handle. Only total tracheal collapse would do.

  Hot blood poured over Daniel’s fist as he held the knife in deep. He wondered who this guard was. How long ago he’d decided that blaming Germany’s Jews was the easiest answer to his woes. How many of his own neighbors he’d sold out. How much he’d longed for the structure and control of the Third Reich to relieve his need for thought. He wondered about who might miss him, a mother or a girlfriend. How many children he had who would no longer hear his hateful rants.

  Killing him was like snipping a thread on its loom. It might have already been woven in, but at least it wouldn’t taint the weaves to come.

  Daniel breathed in. Rode through the guard’s hapless efforts to thrash. Waited for him to go still. Breathed out. The guard’s body was so heavy, slumped against him. Daniel took a step back and slowly lowered him to the bed of the truck. He took in the sad little eyes, the diagonal scar across the man’s mouth. The useless fingers twitching at his side.

  A few more pitiful gurgles, then the guard’s eyes turned dull. Daniel pulled the knife free and wiped it and his hands on the corpse’s coat.

  Liam let out a low whistle. Shaking, Daniel stood up to face him. His expression was an even mixture of terror and awe, and Daniel felt that warmth again in his gut.

  “Ready when you are,” Daniel said.

  Rebeka stepped over the corpse with her hand held over her nose and mouth. Her expression was harder to read, which Daniel hated. He knew she didn’t regret what he did—how could she? How could anyone with an ounce of good in them? But her patience with their journey was growing thin. She didn’t understand—each one he killed was only a drop in the sea of blood they were owed.

  They moved to a corner of the concrete bay, shielded by rows of supply trucks. “The archives are in the old performance hall,” Rebeka said, after scanning the shipping manifests. She studied a facilities map taped to the wall. “One thing these bastards are good at is meticulous recordkeeping.”

  Liam was standing with his jaw clenched and his fists tight, his stare somewhere far away. Deep shadows pulled at his features, more than they should have in the garage bay’s lighting. It was the way he looked when he gathered energy, tapping into that shadow world with the trees that breathed, the ruins that echoed, the behemoth that fed on fear. Liam had called him scary before—but if so, they were two of a kind.

  Liam inhaled deeply and opened his eyes, then smiled at Daniel. Tapped his elbow lightly. “Whaddaya say we thin out the SS’s ranks a little more?”

  Daniel sheathed his dagger and followed him to the door with a flutter in his heart.

  They’d agreed to keep up their ruse for as long as they could—no sense pulling the entire compound down on their heads just yet. The moment someone challenged them, though, they were ready. Rebeka’s pistol was wrapped in the jacket she carried over one arm, barrel pointed forward, while Daniel kept his shooting arm loose, ready to snatch up his P38. Only Liam appeared completely unarmed, but Daniel knew better.

  The main compound at Siegen was a stucco and wood Bavarian relic, badly outfitted with electric lighting that didn’t so much illuminate as suggest. With their uniforms and bowed heads, they didn’t attract a second glance in the dim and moldy corridor as they strode with purpose toward the archives. Wehrmacht and SS personnel crowded the halls, but there were also numerous civil servants—secretaries and accountants and maintenance workers and more.

  It was the civilians whose presence tightened like a fist around Daniel’s throat. They weren’t career thugs like the soldiers; they were nobodies, just like the Eisenbergs’ neighbors back in Berlin. That bored-looking blond woman clutching a stack of folders could have been the shopkeeper he bought sheet music from, the one who complained to his face about Jews as if they were a parasitic vine coiled around Germany before hastily assuring him that he wasn’t like them. That boy, barely Rebeka’s age, pushing a cart of coffee and sandwiches—he’d been fed a steady, meaty diet of disdain, of an unswerving conviction of the German people’s greatness—and that if Germany were anything less, then it could only be the doing of the Bolsheviks, the Poles, the Jews. If their pay cannot stretch far enough, his mother once said, they’ll gladly blame anyone but the man who doles it out.

  Daniel blinked, trying to clear the red-soaked rage from his sight. He would kill every last Nazi responsible for his family’s death. But he knew the Nazis alone were not to blame.

  “Left,” Rebeka said under her breath, when they reached a junction in the corridor.

  Liam nodded and turne
d.

  “Stop.” A guard stepped toward them as they started down the new branch. “These rooms are forbidden to unauthorized personnel.”

  “Ja, ja.” Liam patted at his uniform’s pockets as if searching for credentials. “Give me one minute . . .”

  The first guard was twenty, tops, while the second had the sagging shoulders of a man in his forties trying to cling to a former glory he’d never truly possessed. Maybe they chose this, maybe they didn’t. Either way, they bore some responsibility: either way, they would pay.

  “Ach. Here it is. In my pocket.” Liam smiled and slowly withdrew his hand from his breast pocket as he hummed a strange melody.

  Daniel slid his sidearm free, but it turned out there was no need.

  The shadows erupted from the floor like lava and wrapped around each guard in an instant. Any screams they might have made were instantly shoved back down their throats as viscous darkness poured into their mouths, their nostrils, their eyes. They dangled, suspended by the bloody vines, and twisted back and forth as Liam curled his fingers. Then he slammed his palms together—and they folded away into nothingness.

  The hallway stood empty before them.

  “Wh-where did they go?” Rebeka asked.

  “Through the veil.” Liam’s hands trembled as he dropped them to his sides, wisps of shadow still trailing from his fingertips. “Let the—the creatures over there deal with them.”

  Daniel recalled the faceless behemoth stalking through the underbrush and savored his sudden flush of cruel delight.

  Liam cocked his head toward Daniel. “Now, as for the archives door—”

  “Just a moment.” Daniel slipped his makeshift lock-picking tools from his pocket and made quick work of the doors. They were finely carved, the wood trim swirling with flowers and the remnants of paint. Such a needlessly elegant building for such appalling purpose. Rebeka scanned the corridor while he worked, but Daniel sensed Liam’s gaze on his fingers and felt a blush creep up the back of his neck.