Of Loyalty and Shadow

Bang. Bang. Bang.

She jumped. Who the fuck knocked on the door, after sundown? Who the fuck knocked at all? Unfortunately, she knew the answer even before she opened. Even before she looked into the harsh green faces of the Veril soldiers standing on her parents’ neatly swept doorstep.

She slammed the door shut again.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Somewhere upstairs Merry barked, shrill and almost hysterical. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Aufmachen, oder ich schieße!”

The German sentence sounded drawn out and harsh in the demon’s foreign accent, yet she couldn’t help but be impressed—this was the first time she had heard any of them speak anything other than English or Veril.

She took a deep breath and pushed the handle down.

He towered over her, filling the doorframe completely. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing the typical dark-gray camouflage and leather armor of the Kirtim Shenk. His hair was shaved on both sides of his head and the rest tamed in an impressively long black braid. She stiffened when her eyes fell on the shining mark on his right wrist: two lines and between them a triangle topped with two circles.

He inclined his head. “I am—”

“Colonel Vik Ichel,” she spat the name out. “The Butcher’s right hand.”

The Butcher and his colonel, leaders of the Veril army who had, in one night, slaughtered all the men in Hamburg. How exactly they had done it, nobody knew. Not even now, almost six months after the massacre.

Instead of taking offense at the moniker, he smirked and gave her a hint of a bow.

“And you?” He reached back to a soldier standing at his heels and snatched a piece of parchment out of his hands. The Colonel scanned the lines and zigzags of the alien writing and looked back at her. A slight furrow appeared between his brows.

“Petra Neumann?”

His accent was so sharp she would not have understood the name if it hadn’t been her mother’s. She pressed her lips shut.

He kept scrutinizing her. The effect of his presence was suffocating. She had, of course, seen Veril soldiers before, but never that close and never one as famous—as infamous—as him. She almost thought that she could feel his magic tingle in the hairs on her arms. She was not a cowardly woman, but still, it took all her self-control not to step back. Instead, she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, fixing him with a haughty gaze as her hand sank slowly into her pocket.

The warrior shook his head and said something to his companions in the elves’ hissing snake language. He was not an unattractive man, she had to admit—if you were into that aggressive, testosterone-dripping, hypermasculine monster type. Which she was not, of course. Fortunately not. Did the Veril even have testosterone? Did they even have hormones at all, or did their bodies run on magic and malice alone?

A voice behind her pulled her agitated mind back to reality.

“Katharina?”

Her mother. She balled her fists. Why didn’t she stay back like she had been told to do? Why had her parents even asked her to come here if they never listened?

Colonel Vik snapped some kind of order, and ere Katharina could try to prevent it, his men had stormed the house, maneuvering past her and taking her mother by the upper arm, not forcefully but insistently. Katharina counted the warriors: five inside; six dark shadows behind the flower beds in the front yard; and a particularly unsettling one on her doorstep.

Her mother protested, and Katharina heard a soldier reply in calm English that sounded kilometers more polished than that of the Colonel.

“It’s fine, Mama,” Katharina called out in German, never ungluing her gaze from the Veril before her. “Don’t fight them. Remember what we’ve talked about. They’re going to bring you and Papa to Anna—they’re not going to hurt you.”

“Katharina…” the syllables rolled over the Colonel’s tongue as his tone trailed off.

Again, his pronunciation was terrible, the As sounding more like Es. But she was used to her name being corrupted in other countries, and, actually, as much as it pained her to admit it, she kind of liked the way it sounded. Besides, anything was better than Catherine.

He was still looking at her, as if debating whether he should interrogate her or eliminate her right away. Katharina decided to put him out of his misery—and herself out of danger. She didn’t want to be shot or strangled or any of the other horrible things the Veril did with their detainees.

“I’m her sister—Anna’s sister,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes, ignoring the sharp sting she felt in her heart at the little fool’s name.

To her absolute horror, he leaned down, sinking his face into the crook of her neck, and smelled her. Her stomach roiled with disgust, and she pressed her eyes shut.

He straightened up, gave her a curt nod, and called one of his men over. The Colonel glanced over his shoulder at the starry sky above the quiet town. The other man, an older-looking soldier, translated, and Katharina recognized the polished English she had heard earlier.

“You have fifteen minutes to get packed. Then we leave.”

“I’m already packed.” She tried to keep the hatred in her heart from filtering into the words.

“Then get your stuff.” He took a step forward.

“I’m not coming. I’m here to make sure that my parents are treated correctly, and then I’m off.” She put one hand on her waist while the other one, the one in her pants pocket, closed firmly around her phone. “And I’m not letting a mass murderer into my family’s home.”

Even with her less than rudimentary knowledge of the Veril language, she could hear the translator’s voice tremble as he conveyed her words, but, to her surprise, the Colonel laughed. He assumed a more relaxed posture, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe and crossing one ankle over the other.

His words had an almost teasing undertone when he spoke. “You are coming with us. So you either get your stuff yourself or I will have to come inside and fetch it for you.”

“You can’t make me!” That was, of course, ridiculously untrue. But all she wanted was to stall, to distract him. Her fingers ran along the cold metal frame of her phone, searching.

He laughed again, and she couldn’t help but notice that despite his monstrous fangs he had a gorgeous smile. A demon, trying to lure in his prey.

“I can make you,” he said. “I do not want to, but I can. And I have to if you do not cooperate. Orders from above.”

“From above?” Katharina’s thumb had found the button and began pressing it rapidly to activate the connection to her emergency contact.

“Aren’t you the mighty Colonel Vik Ichel?” She made sure to pronounce each word as loudly and clearly as possible, praying that the call had gone through.

He scoffed, casually lifted his left uniform sleeve, and brushed his index finger over another mark: a circle and a half-circle sitting on a line. Then, in one smooth movement, he closed his hand over hers and pulled it out of her pocket, retrieving the phone with it.

Katharina groaned, suppressing her scream. All she saw was the short flicker of the illuminated screen, indicating an active call, before he pressed her cell phone against some rectangular device on his belt. There was a buzzing sound, the display went black, and he stuck it into a pocket of his uniform pants.

“You can have it back when we get to Hamburg. Outside calls do not work there. Until then it stays with me.”

Before she could reply, there was a growl next to her right ankle, quickly shifting into an eardrum-piercing bark.

Fuck! Who had let Merry out? This whole thing was a gigantic mess!

“Merry, aus!” Katharina hissed.

But the dog didn’t listen; he never did. The poodle was half hidden, his fuzzy, copper-colored face peeking out from behind her leg. He was yapping at the intruder, emboldened by the faulty assumption that Katharina would be able to protect him. The Colonel smiled, and the look of it made cold sweat break out on her nape. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if something were to happen to her stupid little beast.

With a fluid motion, conveying the absolute control he had over every fiber of his powerful muscles, the Veril crouched down, stretching out his hand and whistling melodically through his teeth. It sounded like a mix between birdsong and the wind brushing through blades of grass.

Merry stopped barking at once and took a curious step out of his shelter, one paw cautiously in the air.

Despite the harshness of his native language, the Colonel spoke warmly, and even without understanding the words, Katharina recognized the international tone that people all over the world—and apparently all over the universe as well—used to talk with dogs.

It didn’t take much to convince the poodle. He hopped forward, wagging his tail, and began sniffing the demon’s outstretched hand.

“Sumik,” the Colonel chuckled and, to Katharina’s utter surprise, began scratching the dog behind his ears, continuing to praise him in Veril.

The landline rang. The shrill sound made Katharina start, and the Colonel straightened up again. He lifted his index and middle fingers, and Merry obediently sat down, completely calm and quiet, his ears pricked up and his eyes fixed immovably on the warrior.

One of the Veril standing guard next to the stairwell leading up to the second floor pulled out a long, jagged knife and cut the phone cable. The silence that followed was deafening.

“Fetch your things,” the Colonel said. The warmth had left his voice.