She looks up at the ceiling and opens her mouth to catch the falling drops of blood.
Oh, how delicious, he’s still alive. She can taste his agony and terror as his life bleeds out. She wonders if his eyes are open, is he looking down on her and von Regensberg? Probably not, Illana likes to blind her prey, it makes them even more terrified. But just in case, she takes her hands from von Regensberg’s head, where his mouth is busy between her thighs, and runs her hands up her bloody skin to her breasts. She plays with them, displays them to the prisoner suspended above her, hanging from hooks in the ceiling, bleeding out over her. Oh, she feels so playful!Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 12: Blood Sex”→
Outside, in the desert, in the night, a jackal barks. And then howls.
Inside, in the temple, the sound barely penetrates.
Inside the temple, the air is still and smells of stone and smoke and people and snake. Very much of snake, the dry reptilian odor is a constant presence and rasp of scales on stone seem to always be on the edge of hearing.
The walls and the pillars holding up the roof are covered in hieroglyphs recounting Set’s battles with Osiris. Snakes, the servants of Set, are carved everywhere. There is a large door across the room from the dais. The room is filled with priests and priestesses and temple guards. They give voice to a hymn, praising the God and and beseeching his favor. Their voices are low and the sounds sibilant. Echos form and gather against the ceiling, against the tops of the pillars with their crowns of snake heads.
A dias at the end of the room, overlooked by a tall statue of Set, so tall that its head brushes the high ceiling of the temple, stands Mnemtarep, the High Priest. He is a majestic man, filled with charisma. The color of his skin proclaims that he’s from the south, up the Nile, from Meroe and its fabled necropolis. The gold and black of his regalia gleam in the torchlight. The crown, a coiled cobra, rests on his shaved head. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 11: In The Temple Of Set, A Vampire Is Born”→
The sound of screams. Agony. Pleading. Echoing against the stone walls and the vaulted ceiling. The sounds of mad science – arcing electricity, pounding generators.
The smell of blood. Thick and coppery. So thick that it can be tasted.
This is happening more and more often, she thinks.
No matter where she is, now matter how far away she is, she who is now called Bathory in this loud and fast time always knows where the Nile is. It’s over in the east and low in winter. No matter how fast time has started to run in the last few centuries, the Nile has remained slow and regular. It rises, it floods, it retreats. Year after year. Century after century. Millennia after millennia.Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 9: Back At The Castle Of Blood”→
Which really doesn’t matter all that much because they’re all singing different songs in different languages as they walk through Camp Cuckoo. It may not be music, but it’s one hell of a noise. The Norwegian bearskin has a deep and growly voices, provides the bass notes while the Navajo skinwalker yips and yelps the high notes and the catwolf Beast of Gevudan, representing the Free French, appears to be singing some sort of cabaret version of La Marseillaise.
The shifters appear to be a good mood. The winter weather suits them much better than the summer heat, especially the Norwegian and the French.
Tipareth feels queasy at the insane dissonance. His artistic nature revolts at experiencing art defiled like this. When a particularly loud blast from the experimental weapons area where the mad scientists are working on energy weapons drowns out the, he doesn’t hesitate to think out it as caterwauling, he smiles in relief and hurries to catch up with the others.
He walks through the camp, dodges around people, avoids Jeeps and trucks, salutes when required. He does all of this without seeing. He’s not totally divorced from his surroundings, that cunning survivor beast in the back of his mind won’t allow that. But everything but his survival instincts are bent on planning how to get to Leah.
He pauses in the shadow of the gate to Camp Cuckoo. He spares the monster skull a considering glance. Puts the last pieces together. Nothing too complex at this stage. Too early. But the general outlines seem to be solid.
The survivor instinct taps him on the shoulder. He turns at the sound of his name.
“Sergeant Mirsky! Sergeant! Hold up a minute, there!”
The man calling his name wears Major’s rank, so Mirsky snappily salutes. “Yes, sir!”
The Major’s a tall man, uniform’s tailored, looks like he’s got Intelligence pins on his collar. Mirsky checks his hands and they’re soft and clean. He’s desk, not field. Probably never seen combat. Then he gets close enough and Mirsky sees his eyes. Cold liar’s eyes and Mirsky automatically makes him as a dangerous man. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 6: What A Putz”→
“Istanbul? That makes sense. But how the fuck do I get to Istanbul?” Mirsky stops muttering to himself and looks up from the letter. In his mind, he’s already on the way. “I’ll get Bing and Bob and we’re on the road to Istanbul.” Deserting the Army is just an obstacle to be overcome. Sure, it’s been nice to be given the opportunity to kill Nazis, but this is his sister and she’s more important than anything. He starts figuring angles, scams, different ways to make it happen.
Thoughts, memories of Leah keep intruding. What she must be going through. Memories of how scared he was, the first times he had to do what needed to be done. She was always the tough one. Fearless. Anyone could stand up to the Russians, they were just thugs, but she stood up to their father, stood up to the Rabbi, stood up to all the scary old women who looked and judged. She stood up and never backed down. All alone. He always had his gang at his back.
He carefully smooths out the letter, folds it, and puts it back into the envelope. He tucks the letter away safe into an inside pocket. Each movement is precise and controlled. Those who knew him, back then, back in the cities, they would have recognized that style of moving. Benny Mirsky getting ready to do what needed to be done. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) Camp Cuckoo”→
Leaving the post office, Leah Mirsky knows that she’s got to get out of the city. Get out of the country. She finds it hard to believe that she was so stupid as to think that Budapest could have been any sort of refuge. When she’d first arrived, fleeing the Bolshevik pogroms in Odessa, it had seemed liked a comforting piece of the old Empire, Gentiles and Jews of all nations living together, assimilated.
The light of the rising sun shines through a window and illuminates a US Army Colonel seated behind his desk. With its cheap fake antique furniture and faded print of a Parisian street scene, the office shows signs of having been requisitioned from the French colonial administration. His coffee steams and he tries to tighten his jacket around his paunch against the winter cold that inhabits the room. He takes a sip of coffee, winces, sighs, puts on a pair of glasses, and starts going through a pile of reports. He looks up as the door opens and an Army Intelligence officer, tall, WASPy, enters. He’s carrying a handful of flimsies.
“Colonel Morehouse, I’ve just received reports of another attack by those Nazi monsters on one of our fuel convoys.” The intelligence officer has the American aristocratic accent that guarantees his attendance at one of the Ivy League schools.
“Dammit! Casualties?”
“Not as bad as it could have been. That special detachment from Camp Cuckoo,-” His voice becomes tinged with a combination of disbelief and distaste. “-the Fightin’ Rabbi and his walking statues, showed up and drove the monsters off before the convoy was completely destroyed.”
