Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Forty



“We have a situation,” Ward said as Tommy walked into his office. “It’s on the delicate side, but I think we’ve learned to trust each other these past few months, haven’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Tommy said. He had no idea why he’d been called in. He wondered whether ASTRIA might be ready to send him on some kind of mission—it felt like he’d been testing and training forever, and he was going stir crazy inside the base.

“I had to follow a very difficult order,” Ward told him. “One of the most difficult of my career. You see, the top brass have decided that paranormals are a threat on par with terrorists, a lone individual capable of doing widespread damage or otherwise breaking national security. Those who are not with us are considered ‘against us.’” Ward watched him closely.

“I understand. But I’ve been working with you, sir.”

“And that’s what makes you so valuable. You’re willing to do the right thing, to put the bigger cause ahead of yourself. Not everyone’s willing to do that.”

“Is this about Jenny, sir? Or Seth?”

“I’m afraid it’s about Esmeralda.”

“She’s not a threat to anyone!” Tommy said. “Her power isn’t dangerous, like Jenny’s. Or mine.”

“That’s not exactly the case,” Ward told him. “Imagine if she got her hands on the body of a high-level politician, military leader, or intelligence operative.”

“That’s not very likely,” Tommy said. “All she does is put funeral makeup on dead people in Los Angeles. She’s not working in Washington, D.C. or anything.”

“If we can determine her power, then so can foreign governments, including those unfriendly to our country. So can criminal and terrorist groups. Any of them might kidnap her and use her for their own ends.”

“You make it sound like she’s in danger.”

“Exactly right. ASTRIA is not the only organization searching the world for paranormals. There are enemies of the United States doing the same. After the Fallen Oak incident, the Pentagon does not want any of them running wild, anywhere. ASTRIA’s role is to identify, recruit...or neutralize.”

“Neutralize?” Tommy felt panicked. “Esmeralda? You’re not going to hurt her, are you? Or...” Tommy couldn’t bring himself to say kill her. He felt the beginnings of rage inside him. If these people had killed Esmeralda, he was never going to work with them. He would take out as many as he could before they killed him.

“No, no. I have clearance to do that, you understand, but like you, I couldn’t see how Esmeralda was a bad or dangerous person. So I took the only other option available: capture her, since she refused to come willingly.”

“You’re going to kidnap her?”

“We have taken her into custody,” Ward told him. “And she’s been transferred here.”

“Here?” Tommy felt a confused mixture of outrage and excitement. “She’s right here at the base?”

“Confined in a cell, unfortunately,” Ward said. “I wish she had agreed to come when we asked her, but she didn’t leave us any choice. We are taking good care of her, though, and she has shown some willingness to cooperate with tests. There’s potential there, but we need to bring it out.”

“Let me talk to her,” Tommy said. “I’ll explain what you’re really doing here.”

Ward paused for a minute, as if thinking this over carefully. “Do you believe she will listen to you? We don’t want to upset her.”

“She’ll listen,” Tommy said. “Maybe not right away, but if I can keep visiting her, keep talking to her...She’s not stupid. She’ll come around.” Tommy had no idea whether she would ever agree to work with them, but he was dying to see her again.

“It might help her along, seeing a familiar face,” Ward mused. “Having someone she trusts to comfort her.”

“I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Ward turned his attention to his computer screen. “Dismissed.”

Tommy walked back toward his room, but he slowed as he passed the double doors to the third corridor, where he’d seen the conjugal rooms in his flashes of his previous life. It felt strange to think of himself as an S.S. officer, a Nazi...under Ashleigh's control, yet again. He was beginning to wonder how many lifetimes he’d spent being manipulated by her, even while immune to her actual power.

He pushed on the doors, and felt mildly surprised when one of them opened. He walked into the third corridor, wondering if all the luxurious furnishings were still here, the old phonographs waiting to play German chamber music.

He opened the door to the first room. It was empty, stripped down to the bare concrete, with a huddle of cardboard boxes and trash bags in one corner, all the beauty long since carted away by either the Nazis or the Soviets who came after them.

Tommy crossed the room, his sneakers echoing like heavy boots against the floor. He found the little hole in the wall, which had generally gone unnoticed, lost between the curlicues of a fancy mirror frame. He closed one eye and looked through it, but there was only darkness on the other side.

He had stood there, he remembered, in the narrow hidden passage that ran along this side of the hall, enabling researchers to observe the conjugal rooms without being noticed. He had stood and watched through the little lens in the wall, and now felt embarrassed at the memory.


Niklaus walked up the narrow, dim hidden passage, long after supper when the base was quiet and nobody was likely to be looking for him. He stopped at one of the tiny, glowing circles in the wall, closed an eye, and looked through.

The room was empty, of course, the bed curtains tied back, the furniture dusted. Only a single small lamp provided illumination. It had slipped his mind that they’d already moved Sebastian and Mia out of the room. He’d come here out of habit, along with a dim hope that maybe some other couple had been moved onto the hall.

He’d watched Sebastian and Mia several times over the weeks. At first, it had only been out of curiosity and boredom, a late-night search for entertainment. Watching their bare bodies grind against each other had been far more exhilarating than he’d expected. They f*cked with a raw abandon, thanks to Alise’s enchantment. On subsequent nights, now and then, Niklaus found himself sneaking back for another look, and once he’d gone so far as to unzip and pleasure himself while he watched, never mind the scientists who might walk in on him at any moment.

They were gone now, and he would not get to see Mia squirm in pleasure again, unless they decided to breed her again in another year. Maybe that would be with Niklaus. He’d asked Alise to arrange it for him, but she’d stalled, and now Mia was pregnant by the American instead.

Niklaus started to turn back, feeling disappointed, until he heard a gasp farther down the hidden passage. He followed it to the last room on the short hall. The walls near the hidden lenses were perforated with pinpoint holes, allowing sound to pass through to observers. He heard the sound again—a high-pitched squeal, then a gasping sound.

Grinning, he wondered who had been paired up now. Tonight’s visit might not be a complete waste, after all.

He closed an eye and peered through the lens.

This room was the nicest of them all, everything trimmed in marble and traces of polished gold. The bed was the largest he’d ever seen, its frame and high poster columns carved from ebony. On the bed, he saw the visiting American banker, Jonathan Barrett, stripped naked and furiously mounting a girl Niklaus couldn’t clearly see, but she was blond. He assumed it was a nurse or typing pool girl the visitor must have picked up. Whoever it was, she shuddered, screamed, snorted, and writhed, shaking and lost in pleasured agony as he took her faster and faster, to the sound of a Wagner overture on the phonograph.

Niklaus wanted to laugh at the girl’s grunting and howling. The guy was really reaming her hard. He’d never known a woman could make sounds like that.

Then she turned her head, and he recognized that the squirming girl with her knees locked around Barrett’s hips was his own cousin Alise.

His smile vanished, and he felt his heart shrivel and turn cold. He felt it like a fist in his gut. He’d been with Alise several times now, even though each time, when he finished, he told himself he would never do it again. The part of him that stewed in guilt and shame kept losing out to the part that still lusted for her—he’d never been able to turn her down when she came to his door.

It stung to see her with another man, especially lying back spreading herself wide for him, when she’d always insisted that she be on top with Niklaus, never letting him truly take her. Now she gave herself freely to this foreigner, making sounds like he’d never heard. With him, she had always just panted a little, then panted a little faster near the end. With Barrett, she thrashed and cried out like a wild animal.

He saw, too, that Barrett was substantially thicker and longer then he was, filling Alise far more fully than Niklaus ever could. His cousin seemed enthralled, in a state of ecstasy, looking up at Barrett with droopy lids. She’d certainly never given Niklaus a look like that...a look of surrender.

He quivered where he stood, opening and closing his fists. He had an urge to charge in there, scream at his cousin, and maybe put his Luger to Barrett’s head and shower his brains all over the wall. No, Niklaus thought. I won’t start with his head.

Before he could do anything, the door to the conjugal room opened. Gruppenführer Kranzler was there, arms crossed, eyes looking coldly at Alise and the foreign man. Niklaus froze where he was, wondering how Kranzler would react to seeing Barrett on top of his best aide.

Kranzler just watched for a minute, while Alise and Barrett continued on, faster and louder, wrapped in their own world.

“It’s a useless effort,” Kranzler finally said, startling the two on the bed. “She’s as barren as a rock in the desert. Trust me.”

Barrett paused, sweating and catching his breath. He looked from Kranzler to Alise. “Doesn’t feel useless to me,” he finally said.

Kranzler glared at Alise for another long moment, and Niklaus recognized the expression. Jealousy. So she’d been f*cking Kranzler, too. Niklaus wanted to punch his fist through the wall.

Finally, Kranzler snarled, “You may continue entertaining our guest, Alise.” He slammed the door as he left. Barrett looked down at Alise.

“Keep going. I’ll show that ugly bastard who’s barren,” Alise hissed.

Barrett started up again, and Alise soon clenched her eyes and screamed in pleasure again as his oversized cock slid in and out of her.

Niklaus felt a shining, glittering hate for his cousin Alise, recognizing that she had no real love for him at all. She was only using him. She wanted to get pregnant, and she didn’t seem too picky who the father might be.

He stalked away down the hidden passage, the sound of Alise’s high-pitched cries following after him, mocking him.

Instead of bursting in on them, he paced up and down the male residential corridor. He should be relieved, he told himself. He should never have thought of Alise that way in the first place, never fantasized about her, never given in...She had brought out the worst in him, as she always did.

Someone else had been on his mind, in every way Alise’s opposite, small, quiet, looking as fragile as Niklaus often felt on the inside. Evelina, the Slavic girl who could speak to the dead.

The next day, he went down to the cellblock to visit her. He’d been fascinated by her since the day he and Alise had moved her down, maybe because she seemed so innocent and harmless next to Alise. He had strange feelings toward Evelina, and attraction was the smallest part of it. He felt the need to protect her, and to make life a little easier for her.

He had resisted his feelings while he and Alise were intimate together, but now that he understood Alise didn’t truly care for him, he grew emboldened enough to go and speak to Evelina.

He knocked on the closed panel in her door, then waited a moment, working up his nerve, before he opened the panel and looked at her through the barred window.

She sat on her bed, looking back at him and waiting.

“Hello,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply.

“How are you?” he asked.

She glanced around at her concrete cell. “How should I answer that?”

“I don’t know.”

She watched him expectantly, her eyes dark and vibrant.

“I brought you...there was Bavarian chocolate on our last supply train,” Niklaus said. “Not much, but S.S. men all got some. I saved a little. Would you like it?” He held up a square of chocolate wrapped in tin foil, offering it through the bars.

“Why are you giving me that?” She remained on her bunk.

“Come on. Take it.”

“Is that an order?” She slowly stood and walked toward him, her eyes full of suspicion. She unwrapped it, revealing the rich chocolate, and her eyes widened. “Is it poisoned?”

“Why would I poison it?”

“To kill me?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Am I supposed to trust you?” Evelina asked.

Niklaus sighed and thought about it. “If you were going to die...wouldn’t it be better to die by chocolate poisoning instead of a firing squad?”

“This is true.” She looked at the chocolate but made no move to eat it. “Why would you give me this?”

“I just...feel I should help you,” Niklaus admitted. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“Yes. Unlock the door and let me go home.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

“You can’t? You’re standing outside my door. You’re even wearing an S.S. uniform. I think you could get me out of here if you tried.”

“They would kill me,” Niklaus said.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll use chocolate.” Evelina gave him a thin smile.

“Are you going to taste it or not?”

“What’s the hurry? I have days and days to pass.” She placed it on the wobbly bookshelf that held her clothes, which now consisted only of the cheap, plain gray dresses and slippers the Nazis had issued her.

“Saving it for later.” He nodded. “That’s smart.”

Evelina shrugged.

“Can I bring you anything else?”

“Besides a key to my door?” Evelina glanced around her cell. “I have nothing to do here. Can you bring me something to read?”

“What would you like?”

“Novels, newspapers, magazines, it doesn’t matter! Just anything to keep my mind busy.”

“I can do that.” He smiled at her, but she didn’t return it.

“And more chocolate,” she added. “If it isn’t poisoned.”