My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (19 page)

It was time to go.

40

The injured pilot strained to speak to the men who were gathered around him. “The vampires will kill you. They will kill all of you,” he gasped.

Klaus spoke up first. It broke his heart to see the life force ebb out of the man who saved him from the horrors of Stalingrad. “He’s right. The vampires want that evil girl.”

Wolf shook his head. “She is not evil. She saved our lives. I know this is a difficult and strange situation, but your
Luftwaffe
friend is horribly burned. He is delirious from the pain.”

“If we get rid of her, we get rid of the vampires,” Klaus argued. “We might survive this night.”

Wolf had no response. He had no desire to die trying to save civilians whose fate was sealed anyway. He probably could be talked into leaving Eva in the graveyard, but for the fact that Sebastian wouldn’t leave her side.

“Why does your friend continue to protect her? Her very presence puts our lives at risk,” Klaus said.

“I trust his instincts,” Wolf replied.

“This goes far beyond human instincts. We are dealing with supernatural forces. Vampires. Possibly even black magic.”

“And the Russians,” Dieter added.

“And the Russians,” Klaus repeated. “We’re going to have enough trouble getting out of Berlin without having to fight vampires too.”

“Sebastian’s girlfriend is creepy,” Dieter said.

Wolf bit his bottom lip. “Dresden,” he said loudly. The men stared at Wolf, unsure of what was going to come out of his mouth next.

“What about Dresden?” Klaus asked.

“You wanted to know why Sebastian protects the girl. So, I told you. He is from Dresden.” That statement instantly changed the tenor of the conversation.

“I heard the rumors,” the old man said, brushing his silver hair out of his eyes.

“The rumors are true,” Wolf began. “The Allies dropped tons of incendiary bombs on a city that was packed with refugees and created one of the largest firestorms in history. No one will ever know how many tens of thousands of people are buried in the mass graves. They’ll debate it for the next 100 years, but no one will ever truly know.”

The men stayed quiet. News of the tragedy spread through Germany almost as fast as the hurricane-strength winds that sucked people into the fire. The attack on the beautiful baroque city on the Elbe was an attack on the very soul of the German people.

“At the height of the firestorm, people got trapped in the Dresden city center. Many of them jumped into the city fountain to try to escape from the flames. That’s where they found Sebastian’s wife and little girl.”

“Did they live?” Dieter asked.

“They were boiled alive,” Wolf said solemnly.

Dieter shuddered at the thought.

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Klaus cursed under his breath as Sebastian and Eva emerged from the darkness. “Devil girl is back,” he said.

“Kill her!” Axel gasped.

Overcome by emotion, Klaus stood up and pointed his rifle at Eva. “Let’s shoot her! The vampires will stop hunting us—we’ll be safe!”

Sebastian jumped up and put himself in the line of fire. “Easy there, old man. Put the gun down. We’re all on the same side.”

Klaus didn’t flinch. “How many more of us have to die because of that evil bitch? We can get out on a plane if we make it to Brandenburg Gate. You said so yourself—that’s why we followed you. We don’t need this vampire shit!”

Sebastian put his hand over the muzzle. “I’m not going to let you to shoot her.”

“Get out of my way! She is not your daughter! Your daughter is dead! I will shoot that witch!” Klaus yelled, his voice breaking with emotion.

“Shoot her, pop!” Dieter shouted.

As Klaus began the muscle contractions on his index finger to squeeze the trigger, Sebastian moved at lightening speed and tackled him. Dieter jumped on his back, but he ended up on the ground next to his grandfather. With his growing strength, Sebastian could have easily killed them both. Instead, he held them down just hard enough to prevent them from hurting someone.

Unnoticed during the mêlée, Eva put her hands on Axel’s face. She closed her eyes and a soft blue glow emanated from her palms. Axel moaned and tried to push her away as the light grew brighter, but she kept her hands on him.

Dieter noticed the light as he tried to wrap his hands around Sebastian’s throat. “She’s hurting him!” he screamed.

Sebastian released his grip on the two and the fight ground to a halt. Eva fell away unconscious as Klaus and Dieter ran to Axel’s side. “Are you alright?” Klaus cried. “Axel, are you still alive? Talk to me.”

Axel slowly pulled his hands away from his face.

The men stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “Oh my God,” Klaus said. “This is a miracle ... a true miracle.”

The pilot opened his eyes and touched his cheek. It wasn’t burned anymore. In fact, his complexion was as clear as the day he was born. When Axel realized that his burns had healed, he wept like a baby.

Sebastian cradled Eva in his arms. “Do any of you brave warriors still want to kill her?”

Before anyone could answer that question, a Russian patrol swept a spotlight across the cemetery. The men dove to the ground and went still. Fear gripped them as the bright light lit the cemetery around them. After a few tense minutes, the patrol left. “
We’ll wait here a few more minutes, then move out
,” Wolf whispered.

Dieter nervously adjusted the trigger guard of his new
Panzerfaust
. Suddenly, the weapon roared and the shell flew straight up into the air. The horrified men watched it fall back to Earth thirty meters away and explode.

Klaus tried to comfort his distraught grandson. “Relax, Dieter. Those drunken idiots probably didn’t even notice where the fireworks came from.”

Then all hell broke loose. Russian soldiers shouted, gunshots rang out and the searchlight headed straight for them. Machine gun tracer fire whizzed through the air at unseen targets of opportunity. “Lock and load. We’ve got to take them out!” Wolf shouted.

Klaus hyperventilated and dropped a handful of bullets as he tried to load his rifle. “My life does not need to be this interesting.”

“Where would you rather be, old man?” Wolf replied with a smile.

Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream filled the air. A second later, the searchlight went dark and the gunfire stopped. Klaus and Wolf exchanged curious glances and wondered if it was a Russian trick.

A quick movement to their right caught them off guard; Sebastian emerged from the shadows covered in blood. “What the hell happened to you?” Wolf asked.

“The Russian scouts have been dealt with,” Sebastian replied.

Flares shot overhead and bathed the cemetery in eerie red light. Then they heard the distinct pop of a mortar tube.

“They’ve got friends!” Wolf shouted. “Incoming!”

The men took cover as best they could as the shells exploded around them.

After a few rounds, the bombardment stopped and silence enveloped the graveyard. Wolf did a quick inventory and was happy to find everyone still in one piece.

“
Maybe they think we’re dead
,” Dieter whispered.

A Russian soldier with a megaphone shattered that illusion. “
Achtung!
Brave soldiers of the
Wehrmacht
,” he called out in broken German. “You do not need to die here tonight in this lonely graveyard.”

“I heard this shit before,” Axel said.

The Russian continued. “Surrender now and join your comrades in a holding camp until the war is over. You will be given food, medicine and water and treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.”

Axel’s anger boiled over. “The Geneva Convention? What kind of bullshit is that? They don’t even know where Geneva is!” Then he got up and fired a few rounds at the sound of the voice.

Axel hit the dirt as bullets exploded around him. He was unscathed when the return fire stopped, which amused him to no end.

“Do you ever think before you fucking shoot?” Wolf asked the grinning pilot.

“No. No, he doesn’t,” Klaus said, answering for him. “I suspect he has anger-management issues.”

Before Wolf could rebut that smart-ass remark, the bombardment resumed. The men took cover as each successive salvo got closer; it was only a matter of time before the mortar team zeroed in on them. The Russians weren’t going anywhere as long as they thought that the cemetery still contained a pocket of resistance.

“We’re trapped!” Klaus yelled over the explosions. “They’ll keep bombarding us with those goddamn mortars until we’re dead.”

“The river! It’s our only way out!” Sebastian replied.

“But I can’t swim!” Klaus yelled.

Wolf pulled him off the ground by his collar. “You’re about to learn, old man! Get your ass up!”

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