Excerpt

PROLOGUE:

Then: Esterwegen, Poland, late April, 1945

SHE KNEW HER NAME was Eva, but she thought of herself as Twosie. She considered this a logical choice of names, since the number two comprised the first and last digits of the numerical string blue-tattooed on her right forearm.

Everything revolved around numbers in the camp. The watchtowers bore stencilled numbers, as did the splintery wooden walls of the barracks. Six corpses required twelve corpse-carriers and the twelve carriers required four guards. Twosie had been in the Esterwegen concentration camp for seventeen months, four days and nine hours of her eight years.

Freda stood shivering beside her. Unlike Twosie, she didn't know how long she had been a prisoner. Nor was she inclined to ask. She knew only that she and Twosie had stood outside of the commandant's quarters for a long time. The ragged, black-and-white striped pajamas they wore did little to protect them from the chill breeze that sliced across the frozen mud of the compound. A brief snow flurry sprinkled their closely-cropped hair.

A searchlight beam suddenly stabbed through the indigo sky and came sweeping toward them. The girls squinted away from the funnel of white incandescence and it moved on, bisecting the blue-black tapestry of the sky. From far away came a distant rumble, as of thunder. Earlier in the day, Twosie had overheard several men excitedly claiming the booming noises weren't thunderclaps at all, but artillery fire––American artillery.

They said the Germans would soon be in panicked flight. It was also whispered that before they fled, the soldiers would execute every inmate of Esterwegen before the camp could be liberated. Twosie didn't know what to believe. The prisoners were sustained on a steady diet of rumors, less nourishing than bread but served far more frequently.

Sometimes the rumors were seasoned with folklore and legend. Among Twosie's fellow Hungarians, acting Commandant Von Bork was believed to be an ocajinik, a shadow walker, but the woman who traveled everywhere with him was said to be far worse. Although she was supposed to be a countess, she was reputed to be a strigoaica, and that made her far more monstrous than the most depraved of the SS.

The heavy wooden door suddenly swung inward, pulled open by a gray uniformed, jack-booted Waffen SS officer, a lieutenant. He gestured impatiently to the children. "Komm!"

Twosie made a tentative step toward the threshold, but she was so cold she feared to move quickly, afraid that her legs would break like icicles. The officer snatched her by the front of her tunic, snarling, "Schnell!"

He pulled her into the room and released her. Twosie was so shocked by what she saw she was only dimly aware of Freda stepping up behind her. A snowy white lace cloth covered a long dining table and to Twosie's eyes, it seemed to tremble beneath the weight of the massive silver candelabra, glittering tableware––and the food.

The sight and smell of the feast sent sharp, stabbing pains through her belly. Bowls of vegetables, baked potatoes, platters of chicken, dishes of bread, filled all her senses. She sucked back the string of saliva drooling from her open mouth. Freda whimpered, shifting from one foot to the other, then she shouldered Twosie aside and scrambled toward the table.

The lieutenant watched the girl claw up handfuls of boiled vegetables and shove them in her mouth. He smiled in genuine amusement as she tried to cram the butt end of a loaf of bread between her jaws.

Twosie didn't rush for the table. Even through the blood pounding in her temples, she heard her mother's voice whispering to her, telling her not to trust the Germans, not to fall for their tricks and perform for their entertainment. Although her mother had been killed four months before by a pack of guard dogs, Twosie obeyed her instructions. Still, her eyes filled with tears as her shriveled belly growled and rumbled.

Freda started to gag on a thick slab of chicken breast, but she still tried to force more food into her mouth. "Nein!" barked the officer, slapping the meat out of the girl's hand. "Geh!"

Restraining Freda, keeping her flailing arms away from the table, the officer beckoned to Twosie. "Kommen!"

Twosie hadn't shed tears even when she saw her mother's mutilated body, but she wept now, stumbling blindly past the dining table and all the food scarcely an arm's length away. It was as if a celestial door had opened a crack permitting a fleeting glimpse of heaven, then the door had been slammed shut, leaving her unsure if she had actually seen it or only dreamed it.

The lieutenant herded the two girls across the room to a wide, oak-planked door. He rapped on it once, very sharply. The door swung inward. He stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. Twosie and Freda cautiously stepped past him and he swiftly pulled the door closed behind them.

Flare-topped kerosene lanterns illuminated the room with a wavering yellow glow. A hand-cranked gramophone filtered strains of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony from its ornately-decorated funnel. Twosie recognized the music, as tinny as it was. Her father had been a professor of music at the University of Budapest and went to great, often tedious lengths to instill an appreciation of the classic composers in her.

In the center of the big room stood the gaunt figures of other children—all of the Esterwegen child inmates. Twosie counted only eight, an equal number of boys and girls, ranging in age from seven to twelve or thirteen. Some were fair-haired, some were dark, some had blue eyes and some not. They were all identical in their ragged pajamas and expressionless, hollow-cheeked faces. Although the room was windowless, a chill wind wafted in from a wide, square skylight in the high ceiling.

A woman spoke from the shadows on the far side of the light shed by the lanterns. In a soft, melodious half-whisper, she said, "Intampinare, dragut-tas."

She welcomed them in Romanian, calling them darlings, but the woman's voice held an odd accent. Twosie at first saw her as only a black silhouette against the shimmering halos of yellow light. Time froze as the girl stared at her. She was more astonishing in appearance than the remains of the feast.

Countess Dolingen de Fenris was tall and beautiful with a flawless complexion the hue of fine honey. Her long, straight hair, swept back from a high forehead, tumbled artlessly about her shoulders. It was so glossy black as to glisten cobalt when the light caught it. The large eyes above high, regal cheekbones looked almost the same color, but glints of violet swam in them.

The mark of an aristocrat showed in her delicate features, in the arch of brows and her thin-bridged nose. Her face looked vaguely familiar to Twosie, but she couldn't place in her memory where she might have seen it before. Yellow highlights, cast by the lamps, glinted in the woman's eyes, reminding Twosie of how her pet cat Kluju looked when she found him with a mouse squirming between his jaws.

A long, graceful neck led to slender body encased in a bizarre version of an SS officer's uniform––high black boots, jodhpurs of a shiny black fabric, an ebony satin tunic tailored to conform to the swell of her full breasts but oddly loose at the back. Around her left arm was the standard band of red, but it did not bear a black swastika in a circle of white. Emblazoned there was a curious symbol, both familiar and strange at the same time. Twosie saw the image of a slender-bodied serpent with its own tail in its mouth stitched in gold thread. The circle formed by the serpent enclosed a stylized human fist.

"Widerlich!" a man's voice demanded. He spoke in German and the tone dripped with disgust. "These are the best that could be found?"

A broad-shouldered, dark haired man stepped forward, looming over a lamp. The wavering light cast yellowish shadows on his scarred, mustached face, making him resemble a wax dummy. Like the woman, he wore a black, high-collared uniform tunic. A pistol was holstered at his waist.

The insignia patch on his sleeve, a black swastika against a triangular red background, looked like a splotch of blood in the semidarkness. He held a leather medical bag in his right hand.

Twosie had only seen Commandant Von Bork from afar, on the day of his arrival. He was handsome, despite the large hooked nose and a complexion so deeply pallid it was almost translucent.

The woman walked around the children, eyeing them, examining them, her boot heels clacking on the floor. "Your doing, Helmur."

With a gentle touch and loving murmurs of instruction, she had Twosie open her mouth and stick out her tongue. The Countess made a "tsk" sound of sympathy and turned to Freda. She caressed the girl's cheek, fingering bread crumbs away from her mouth. Her lips stretched in a warm smile. "Ah, you're a greedy one aren't you? I like that."

Freda didn't understand German and so remained silent, though she tried to return the woman's smile. The woman tilted the girl's head back, telling her in Romanian to stick out her tongue. Freda obeyed and the woman grunted softly as if in satisfaction.

Resting a hand possessively on Freda's head, she said to Von Bork, "All of them are malnourished but they'll have to do."

Von Bork dug around inside his tunic and withdrew a gold clam shell watch. Thumbing open the cover, he frowned at the face. "Our plane to the Alpine redoubt leaves in less than two hours, Dolingen. According to the last report, a division of Allied infantry will be in sight of the camp by dawn. A scouting party is already on its way. A group of their so-called 'mystery men' is with them."

The Countess arched an doubtful eyebrow. "Mystery men?"

The lieutenant spoke up. "Delusional idiots dressed up in masquerade costumes who pretend they have special powers. They've been minor nuisances for several years."

"This group is led by an Irishman called The Scarab." Von Bork smiled coldly. "Perhaps fools like that would be better suited for the Invictus compound than these dirty little mongrels."

Countess Dolingen de Fenris whirled on him, hissing in a voice sibilant with anger, "After Invictus they will no longer be mongrels—they will be my children! When your ridiculous fuehrer is forgotten by history, they will be making history! They will shape the next century!"

Twosie did not allow her confusion and growing fear to show on her face. She continued to pretend she did not understand German.

The commandant visibly blanched, taking a half-step back. "Dearest, I only meant it was a shame the Ahnenerbe hadn't been able to complete the Invictus compound in time to find better test subjects."

The Countess ignored the commandant's words. Stroking Twosie's hair as if it were the coat of a dog, she said in a quiet, sad tone, "All of my own children are dead . . . long, long dead, and I can have no more. It is a condition which grieves me, but one I have learned to accept." She chucked Twosie under the chin. "That's heart-breaking, isn't it darling?"

The woman nodded tersely to Von Bork who opened up the medical case and removed three hypodermic syringes, handing them to the Countess and the lieutenant. He kept one for himself.

Holding the syringe near the lamp, the Countess eyed its amber contents. She said in Romanian, "Soon all of you will be free, but we want you in good health, so we will give you a little boost . . . a shot of vitamins and medicines and other good things. After which. you may eat every morsel of food in the next room while you wait to be . . . " She paused, smiled crookedly and said, "Rescued."

She exchanged nods with the lieutenant and the Commandant. The uniformed men moved among the children, gruffly instructing them to roll up the sleeves of their tunics. They did as they were told without a murmur of protest or eye blink of reaction, even when the sharp needles plunged into their stick-thin arms.

The Countess administered the injection to Twosie. The pain felt like a distant pinch, less severe than the bug bites she suffered on a daily basis in the barracks.

Within a few minutes, Von Bork announced, "Done" and returned the hypodermic to the case. "Now we must leave before the advance guard arrives."

" 'Mystery men' " Countess Dolingen de Fenris said sarcastically. "You're more of a child than this lot."

She turned toward the door. "Follow me, darlings."

They fell into numb step behind her. None of the children spoke until they saw the dining table. Little animal sounds passed their lips. The woman gestured expansively. "Eat. Get healthy so you may be fruitful and multiply."

En masse, the children surrounded the table, snatching handfuls of food from the platter, ignoring silver and dinnerware. Twosie joined in the mad scramble but kept part of her attention on the Countess and the Commandant. Von Bork's face twisted in disgust. "The little beasts."

The Countess laughed. "How can you say that about our children? They are our future."

He shot her an angry glare. "Ridiculous."

"They have a part of me in them now, Ernst. My blood will purify their blood, turn them, transform them. One day, my . . . Invictas will have children of their own, and those children will beget children. In two generations, perhaps three, my family's bloodline will have spread all over the world. The old gods will live again."

"Old Gods," Von Bork repeated grimly, eyes fixed on the children tearing hunks of meat from bone. "And a new age of monsters—"

A staccato burst of machine gun fire drowned out whatever else the man intended to say. From outside, male voices shouted in frightened German, followed by the sound of running feet.

Twosie, gnawing on a drumstick, stared as the door crashed inward, flying from its hinges, propelled by the body of a camp guard. Wood splintered and screws ripped from the frame. Von Bork swore and pulled an automatic pistol from the holster at his hip. Still focused on eating, the children bolted beneath the table, bringing the platters with them.

The dark figure of a man appeared in the doorway. He paused for the briefest of seconds, then lunged into the room, swinging a sub-machine gun back and forth, questing for targets. He moved so fast, Twosie received only fragmented glimpses of a man wearing a tight-fitting black coverall. A fist-sized object positioned on the center of his chest exuded a golden glow.

The lips of the Countess peeled away from her teeth in a silent snarl. She whirled toward the adjacent room, elbowing the Commandant aside. The intruder shouted "Halten! Lass deine Waffe fallen!"

In response, Von Bork squeezed the trigger of his automatic. The gunshot sounded like a stick of green wood breaking. The glow from the intruder's chest intensified, forming a circle of wavering light around him. A spark flared against it, followed by the whine of a ricochet.

The man in black fired the machine gun, flame and a rattling roar erupting from the bore. Commandant Von Bork staggered back against the wall, a line of moist little dots stitched across the front of his uniform.

As he sagged, the tall intruder bounded around the table toward the next room. The lieutenant leaned out from the frame, his finger working the trigger of his own pistol. Bullets punched holes in the planking of the far wall. The man in black instantly dropped to one knee beneath the end of the table, right beside Twosie. He glanced over at her and their gazes locked. She stopped chewing long enough to examine the man's angular, blue-eyed face. Accustomed to seeing very short hair on the inmates and warders of the camp, his thick dark hair seemed badly in need of a trim. He hadn't shaved in a while, either.

His mobile lips quirked in a faint smile. With his right forefinger, he tapped her lightly on the tip of her nose and said in English, "Carry on."

Springing to his feet, he fired a burst toward the doorway, driving the officer back. The man in black flattened himself against the wall as a sleet-storm of return fire chewed gouges out of the woodwork of the jamb. Glassware on the table shattered. The voice of the Countess rose in an angry shriek. She shouted at the lieutenant to cease fire, that he was endangering the Invictas.

The glow from the intruder's chest suddenly brightened to a dazzling flare. Twosie averted her face, shielding her eyes with a hand. She heard several thuds, the meaty impact of blows being struck and a man crying out in pain.

When Twosie lowered her hand, she saw the black-clad man standing over the motionless body of the lieutenant. She couldn't see if the German breathed or not and she really did not care.

Scrambling forward, pushing Freda aside, Twosie watched the Irishman advance on the Countess. She stood on the other side of the table. The light from the kerosene lamp cast a play of demonic shadows and pallid patterns of luminescence over her face.

Gesturing with the machine gun, the intruder said in English, "Countess Dolingen de Fenris. I saw the results of some of your Ubermenschen experiments. I even had to kill a couple of the poor beggars. I think you rushed them off the assembly line a trifle prematurely."

The Countess smiled but it did not reach her eyes. In the same language she said, "They were prototypes . . . rough sketches. The final product has yet to be released and distributed."

Nodding toward the golden halo surrounding the object on the man's chest, she said, "I assume you're the so-called Mystery Man who calls himself The Scarab. I recognize the device you wear."

The man's hands tightened reflexively around the machine gun. "Device?" His voice came as sharp as a whip-crack. " What do you know about it?"

The woman uttered a brief, patronizing laugh. "You have no idea."

He took a deliberate step forward. "I will, once you're in custody and interrogated. I hope you plan on making a fight of it, Countess."

"By no means . . . Scarab."

The Countess heaved her shoulders in what appeared to be an exaggerated shrug of resignation. A pair of ribbed, scallop-edged wings ripped through the fabric of her blouse and unfolded with a sound like a handclap, many times magnified. They were covered by a dark, leathery tissue. Ivory-colored spikes sprouted from the joints.

Scarab froze in mid-step and although Twosie couldn't see his face, she knew he gaped at the woman in shocked disbelief.

Pivoting on her toes, the wings of the Countess spread to full extension, each one equal in length to her height. The right wing slapped the machine gun out of the man's hands, sending it clattering into a far corner. A reverse buffet caught him on the side of the head, knocking him off his feet.

As he fell, Scarab snatched the lamp from the tabletop. The wings beat the air, lifting the Countess from the floor, carrying her upward to the skylight. The man rolled to one knee and in a looping overarm, hurled the lamp. It struck the Countess on the back, At the juncture where the wings grew from her shoulder blades. The well cracked open, the chimney shattering in a jangle of glass.

In an instant, a layer of flaming kerosene coated the wings. Throwing her head back, the woman screamed in rage and agony. Her wings thrashed furiously, fanning the air with streamers of blue fire. The Countess fought her way through the skylight and out into the open air.

Craning her neck, Twosie watched the blazing figure flap into the star-speckled darkness like an ascending comet. The howls diminished, swallowed up by the night.

Scarab climbed to his feet and stamped on the flames burning along the wooden floor. He stopped trying to extinguish the fire when he saw the children staring at him from beneath the dining table. The golden radiance under his clothing faded. When he heard a jack-hammering fusillade of automatic gunfire, punctuated by heavier crumps of explosions, he strode swiftly into the room, gesturing to the doorway. "Everyone out. Move."

When he realized he had spoken in English, he impatiently repeated the command in German and then Romanian. Reluctantly, the youths crawled out, grabbing as much food from the table as they could carry. Scarab waited until they were all outside, then he dragged out the bodies of the guard and the lieutenant, pulling them along by their legs. It didn't seem to take much effort, Twosie noted.

When they all stood outside in the cold air, Scarab waved toward the distant gate and shouted in English, "Over here, gentlemen!"

Twosie blinked, stared and blinked again, struggling to accept the images her eyes sent to her brain. She saw a dark-haired man in a red and blue one-piece outfit floating above a watchtower. His hands and forearms appeared to be encased in glittering silver gauntlets.

With the gauntlets, the man snatched the bullets fired at him by the two sentries out of the air. He gestured expansively. The guns jumped from the hands of the guards and disappeared into the night. They cried out in shock.

Almost at the same instant, a big man with deep brown skin wearing the drab olive uniform of the US Army charged through the gate, dragging a tangle of barbed wire with him. He slammed a shoulder against the tower's main support post, splintering it as if it were less substantial than a stick of kindling.

The tower shivered, swayed and with a prolonged crack of its wooden supports, toppled over. The sentries leapt from the platform, rolling awkwardly across the frozen mud of the compound. The searchlight exploded in a flash of sparks and a mushroom of smoke.

Two more men appeared, both of them scattering a squad of frightened German troopers before them. One man wore a very tight-fitting black coverall, apparently made of leather. A mask of the same color covered the upper half of his head, extending down to his nose and eyes. A pair of triangles that reminded Twosie of Kluju's ears projected from the sides of his headpiece.

The man leapt and bounded about in a fashion very reminiscent of Kluju, too—he moved exceptionally fast, harrying the fleeing soldiers as if they were mice, kicking and punching them.

The other man was even more startling in appearance. As handsome as a film star, he wore no shirt, exposing his muscular torso to the cold and to weapons. A long green cloak, fastened at his throat belled out behind him. Muddy yellow jodhpurs, a brightly colored sash around his waist and a saffron-colored kufi cap set at a rakish angle on his black, wavy hair completed the man's bizarre costume.

With a pistol and a machine gun, he fired at the running Germans, shouting and laughing in French as he did so. He seemed to enjoy himself immensely.

Helmeted and armed men wearing the uniform of the American military rushed into the compound through the open gate, spreading out in all directions, pursuing the troopers. Twosie heard terrified pleas of "Kamerad!"

The silver gauntleted man dropped out of the sky. He was joined by the other three—the big brown man, the cat-man and the shirtless man with the cape. They exchanged grins and shoulder-claps. Eva saw a lean, dark-haired man walk through the gate behind them, his hands tucked into the pockets of a wide-collared tan trenchcoat. An air of mystery floated about him, not alleviated by the black patch covering his left eye.

The Scarab laid a comforting hand on Twosie's shoulder. "Don't be frightened . . . those are my friends . . . Magno, Samson, Lynx and Kismet."

He did not mention the man with the eye-patch and when Eva looked again, he was nowhere to be seen. Tilting his head back, The Scarab scanned the sky. Twosie followed his stare but saw only frosty-white stars, not the fiery outline of Countess Dolingen de Fenris. She tugged at the man's sleeve to draw his attention. He glanced down at her, smiling in bemusement. "What's your name, little lass?"

Softly she replied, "Two—" She broke off, coughed, gathered her strength and whispered. "Eva. My name is Eva."

The man's eyebrows rose at her use of English. He replied in kind, "Hello, Eva. My name is Peter. You are a very brave girl."

She nodded. "My name is Eva and I . . . and I . . . "

Her voice trailed away as she groped for the right words. The man in black regarded her patiently. "Your name is Eva and you what?"

Drawing in a deep, shuddery breath, Eva pointed at the sky. "My name is Eva and I know who she is."

She raised her voice in an exultant shout of defiance. "I know who she is!"