The Coldest War (47 page)

She pouted, looking hurt. “I didn't make this happen.”

Will said, “You've manipulated us since day one.”

“Of course I did,” said Gretel. “I had to. There has never been a future where the Eidolons didn't roam free. Not a single one. Our doom was sealed the day Herr Doktor von Westarp created his orphanage. It led inexorably to the technology that made us,” she said, one hand laid demurely at the base of her throat. “And once Britain learned of his work, Milkweed also became unavoidable. For how else could you withstand the likes of us without the warlocks to defend you? You couldn't.”

“My God,” said Will.

Marsh shook his head. “Lies. Why go to such effort if the end result was inevitable?”

“There were countless ways this end might have come about. In many time lines, it happens much earlier, during the war: 1941, '42, '43. Those were the most difficult to avoid.” She looked at Will. “Almost as difficult as keeping you alive long enough to do your part. Fortunately for me, Gwendolyn carried that burden until I returned.” She shrugged, unmoved by Will's indignation. “But sooner or later, all time lines pointed to the same conclusion: that no matter what I did, no matter how I strived, I would die when the Eidolons destroyed the world.

“So I chose to forge a
new
time line. One where that will not happen.”

The corner of her mouth quirked up. She fixed a lopsided half grin at Marsh. “And I made certain that when the end came to pass, you would be poised to save me.”

Marsh laughed. To Will, he said, “She believes I'm going to save her.” He shook his head. “No. You'll die with the rest of us.”

“Of course you won't do it for me.” She spoke slowly, as though wanting to be certain her point came across. Her dark eyes turned cold. “You'll do it for Agnes.”

Beside him, Will fell deathly still. Silence filled the room, broken only by the howling wind.

“What?” Marsh rasped.

“If you go back,” Gretel said, “you can save Agnes.”

Marsh staggered against a dusty filing cabinet, feeling as if he'd been poleaxed.

His infant daughter. Long dead and sorely lamented. The unhealed wound he'd carried for so many years was nothing more than an incentive to do Gretel's bidding. Bait.

Because Gretel knew there was one thing Marsh still cared about. One thing he'd fight for. The thing he mourned every day: his family.

Dear God. Even at the end of the world, there was no pulling free of the hooks she'd buried in his heart.

He'd always burned with the need to know why Gretel had murdered his daughter. He'd believed that understanding the tragedy would somehow make it bearable. But knowing the answer hurt more than all the wondering, all the blame and sleepless nights.

Will said, “You monster.”

She crossed the room to lay a hand on Marsh's arm. “Do you see, darling? It was regrettable, but necessary. I did say you'd understand.”

Marsh's fist caught her full on the mouth with a wet
crack
. The punch snapped her head around, sent her sprawling on the floor. A cloud of dust swirled around her.

She climbed to her feet. Blood trickled down her chin from her nose and the corner of her mouth. She pressed a hand to the wound, inspected her blood, held her glistening red fingertips out for Will and Marsh to see.

“Yes,” she said. “This will be sufficient.”

And in that moment, Marsh hated himself more than he ever had during all the cold, lonely nights in the garden shed. Not for belting a woman. She deserved it more than any man he'd ever decked. He'd done far worse to men who'd earned far less.

He hated himself because he knew he'd buckle. Knew he'd give in. Because as much as he despised Gretel, he missed Agnes more. Missed the Liv that had loved him. Missed his wife, his lover. Missed the family life he'd touched so briefly.

I want my family back.

Will must have seen the decision in his eyes.

“Pip,” he said, “there's a problem. Two problems. I can't send you back. The Eidolons have everything they want now. They don't need us to feed them blood prices. What could we possibly offer in a negotiation that would secure their cooperation to send you back?”

Gretel smoothed her braids. She twirled one end, dangling the unused battery connector like a pendulum.

Marsh said, “We give them Gretel.”

Will blinked. “Ah. Right. How selfless of her.” He frowned. “You'll die along with the rest of us. This is no victory.”

Gretel shrugged. “A tiny sacrifice for my greater good. This
body
will die,” she said, “but my consciousness will continue in the new time line. Everything I know, she will know. Everything I am, she will be. And she will be free of the Eidolons.”

“But that's still a different person! Your death—”

Marsh interrupted. “We don't have time for a bloody philosophy seminar!”

Will said, “There's still a problem, Pip. We're missing the most important bit. We need a blood bridge. An anchor. Something to link the here and now with the here and then.” He waved his hands wildly, trying to make his point. “Like the stone during our raid on the farm. One object in two places simultaneously, linking our location in Britain with our location in Germany.” Marsh stared at the stump of Will's missing finger. “But we don't have anything analogous for sending you through time.…”

Will trailed off, frowning at his wounded hand as if noticing it for the first time. He and Marsh stared at each other, then around the room. The room Gretel had chosen.

They turned their eyes to the floor. Beneath a thick layer of dust, the floorboards were scuffed from years of furniture hauled carelessly in and out. Marsh tried to remember how things had been arranged twenty years earlier. Outside, the wind shrieked more fiercely.

There.

Marsh grabbed the metal desk where Gretel had propped her feet, lifted one end, and heaved it aside. It crashed into a gunmetal gray filing cabinet. The empty cabinet toppled sideways, sliding against a roll of carpet and gouging the plaster wall. Marsh dropped to all fours, gritting his teeth as the pain flared in his knee again. A splinter lodged in his palm as he swept the dust away with his hands. He pursed his lips and blew to clear off the fine layer of grit trapped in the wood grain. He swept and puffed, swept and puffed, until he found what he sought.

A bloodstain. Brown with age.

His knee twinged again as he stood. The stab of pain stole Marsh's breath away. He pointed at the stain, panting, “Here's your blood bridge.”

Will stooped to get a better look at the floor. He squinted. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Your fingertip fell right there when I cut it off.” Will winced at the memory. “Your blood stained the floor.”

Will surveyed their surroundings again. “This room—”

“—is where we showed Gretel to the Eidolons.” The building groaned under the assault of the wailing wind. Somewhere, a door slammed. Marsh raised his ruined voice. “Will this work?”

“Yes,” said Gretel.

“I, I think so,” Will stammered. “Perhaps. Probably.”

Marsh said, “Then get prepared.”

He dashed outside, into the corridor that led to the Milkweed vault. As he passed the exterior offices, those with windows overlooking the parade ground and St. James' Park, he saw the spreading darkness had reached London. Streetlamps cast a feeble yellow glow into the Eidolonic night. Wind whipped the lake in the park to a froth; leaves fluttered from the mulberry trees like confetti in a cyclone. But worst of all was how the noise had changed.

Faintly audible over the wind: the sirens had been replaced with screaming. The end of the world didn't come with the crackling of fire or the quiet hiss of ice. It came with thousands of voices raised in fear.

Marsh spun the vault dial through the combination as quickly as he could. He heaved the massive door aside. It smashed against the wall and shook the floor. Light spilled into the vault from the corridor. It illuminated the cabinets that held pixie blueprints; a cloven stone; Enochian lexicons; a photograph of a farmhouse; the Tarragona filmstrip; Schutzstaffel operational records …

A handful of batteries stood together on one shelf. Two of them were newer than the others—Soviet redesigns of the original Reichsbehörde model, taken from the Twins. The other batteries also formed a matching pair. These were older, their gauges showing total charge depletion: the batteries taken from Klaus and Gretel when they'd arrived weeks earlier. Klaus had used one during the battle at Will's house, and the other to rescue the Twin.

But there, alone in the corner, long forgotten under dusty cobwebs, stood the final Reichsbehörde battery. The battery Gretel had been wearing in France the day Marsh captured her. The battery she'd purposely left behind during her brief incarceration, knowing she'd need it again on the day the world ended in 1963.

Marsh snatched the battery and ran back to Will and Gretel. He didn't close the vault behind him. There was no point. In a few more minutes there would be no London, no Admiralty, no vault. Nobody left to steal state secrets.

He again glanced outside on his way back. There was nothing to see. Even the dim glow of the streetlamps had disappeared. Darkness had enveloped the Admiralty building.

He returned to the storage room just as Will smeared a bloody handprint on the floor over the old bloodstain. A smear of red darkened his lower lip; he'd bitten his hand.

Gretel reached toward Marsh. He lobbed the battery into her outstretched fingers. She tried to hide the trembling of her hands as she caught it. In moments the Eidolons would see her, erase her from existence. The one thing that frightened her in all the world. But she embraced that fate so that a younger version of herself, the Gretel of the past, the Gretel of an alternative time line, could survive. Her entire plan amounted to one long, elaborate suicide. Will was right. Only a madwoman would embrace such a fate.

Even if Marsh did find a way to somehow avert this catastrophe. But first, he'd find a way to save Agnes. Save Liv, save his marriage. What point in saving the world—a world—if he couldn't have that tiny piece of it for himself?

This world, however, was doomed. Along with everybody in it. This Liv, the Liv to whom he'd been married for so long, whom he'd loved and loathed in equal measure, had no future. She was dead already. Her entire life had been a pointless prologue to nothing. And he was abandoning her. The guilt threatened to hobble him. It grew worse when he thought of all the things he'd never get to say, all the words he'd never get to take back.…

Marsh asked, “Ready?”

Will's nod was not entirely convincing. “Have you truly thought about this? We're doing this at the spur of the moment. This isn't a simple trip to Germany, Pip. You haven't had time to prepare.”

“We don't
have
time!” Marsh yelled. He pointed to the walls. “The darkness is right outside.”

Marsh clamped his teeth on the inside of his lower lip. The taste of salt and iron coated his tongue. He spit on the floor, at the spot where Will's past and present blood mingled together. Fever and headache throbbed in his skull to the beat of his racing heart.

Will reached into a pocket of his waistcoat. He pulled out his wallet and tossed it to Marsh.

“There's a bit of cash in there. You'll need it.”

The gesture caught Marsh off guard. “Thank you.”

Will had tears in his eyes. “Pip, I … I've made so many terrible choices in my life. If … If you could find a way to prevent them…”

“We've all made mistakes. Me worst of all,” said Marsh. He put a hand on Will's shoulder. “It'll be different next time. I promise.”

“Well,” said Will. He drew a long, shuddery breath. He held it for a moment before launching into a poor rendition of Enochian.

Even Marsh could tell Will wasn't so proficient as the children had been. He was far, far out of practice. But it didn't matter. The Eidolons roamed free in the world; Will caught their attention instantly.

Darkness seeped through the walls. The room reverberated with a crushing sense of unbridled malice. The floor canted slightly to the left. Marsh glanced at his watch. It had stopped.

He recognized the discordant syllables of his own name. The same syllables the children had begun to chant each time they'd seen him.

The Eidolons saw him. Studied him. Looked in him, through him, from within the very particles of his body.

Gretel winked. “See you soon.”

Will panicked: “Wait!
STOP!
”

She plugged in her battery. The darkness pounced.

And Marsh—

*   *   *

Liv huddled in the garden shed, perched on the edge of her husband's cot as the wind howled outside.

She had turned back when she glimpsed the inky sky to the north. It didn't look like any storm she'd ever seen. It wasn't natural, and that scared her just as much as John had. Her anger at Raybould, her disgust with his lies and secrets, hadn't subsided. Still, she wished she hadn't returned to an empty house. There was nobody to hold her, nobody to keep the fear at bay.

But she'd turned her back on him when he called to her. Because she'd been petty, wanted to hurt him as much as his lies hurt her. And now she was alone with only terror for company as the darkness spread.

She buried her face in his pillow and wept. It smelled like the man she'd loved long ago.

*   *   *

Klaus stood before the corner window of his flat, watching as impenetrable darkness descended upon Aylesbury. Madeleine trembled beside him, wrapped only in a robe. He shifted the paintbrushes to one hand then wrapped his free arm around her. It wasn't romantic; he shared her fear.

The wind picked up. A ripple, a gust, a gale. It shredded the greengrocer's awning. An icy draft wormed its way past the window sash.