Grim Tidings Read Online Free Page B

from going through the duty rosters in his camp section. The low block of buildings was set off from the others, behind its own fence. The guard shivering outside the gate barely looked at me before waving me through. I tried not to look around either. If I let myself see the filth, smell the overwhelming stench that rolled out from the deep trenches gashed in the earth even though everything around me was frozen, see the hunched, skeletal forms in pale uniforms that had been striped at some point in the distant past, I knew I wouldn’t be able to move. I’d stand there paralyzed while the hound took over, like a moth transfixed by an open furnace. Then nobody would be safe, and the people who didn’t deserve it would be food the same as the uniformed Germans in the building I stepped into, stamping the snow off my feet.
    No brow-shirted guard jumped up to greet me, which was a little odd. The closer the Americans and the Red Army got, the jumpier these assholes became. This Colonel Kubler would never have promised his soul to a reaper even a year ago, but now thewriting was on the wall. The war wasn’t going to last, and when it was over the warlock who made the best deal would be the only one left standing.
    â€œHello?” I called out cautiously. My German was for shit but it wasn’t like I was here to take notes. Hello, good-bye, the reaper you gave your soul to says it’s time to pay up—that about did the trick for the Nazi’s mother tongue.
    The whole place was quiet, which in and of itself made me shiver a little. These places were scream factories, and even when they didn’t have a fresh crop of prisoners inside they bustled with normal everyday sounds of a field hospital.
    I looked up at a small creaking sound and saw the wire-caged light over my head swinging gently back and forth, like a stiff breeze had just passed by.
    Nothing would have made me happier than to turn tail and not stop until I was back across the Rhine, but Gary would be furious and if nothing else, this Kubler deserved to have his soul pulled out through his nose. A lot of warlocks thought it was possible to cheat a reaper, and I never got tired of seeing the looks on the faces of the ones who really had it coming when I darkened their door.
    â€œHerr Kubler?” I called, starting down the hall. Still quiet, just me and the buzzing lights and the soft drip, drip, drip of melting snow off my overcoat. “Hello?”
    â€œThey’ve gone.”
    I spun to face the open door and the soft voice emanating. Inside was a small office that looked like a tornado had touched down. Colonel Kubler didn’t look nearly as impressive as the photo Gary had shown me. Without the black SS uniform and the hat tohide his bald spot, he looked like any other skinny old man who probably touched your arm a few times too often when he talked to you and spent half the time trying to sneak glances down your blouse.
    I let the leather satchel slide out of my hand, keeping my grip on the brushed steel knife I’d used to pin down stray souls ever since I came to as a hellhound, in the mud at Gary’s feet. He’d leaned down and held out his hand and told me I didn’t have to die. And like an idiot, I let him pull me up.
    â€œLucky I’m not here for anyone else,” I said. Kubler blinked at me when I switched to English, but then he did as well, his voice coarse and reedy as a broom scratching across a floor.
    â€œThey are still here,” he whispered. “But they have all gone.”
    â€œMuch as I’d love to spend my time chatting, I think we both know why I’m here,” I said. “You are way overdue on the deal you signed. You going to come quietly?”
    Kubler started to laugh—at least I thought he was laughing. When it turned to a rusty cough, and a spray of bright red dusted his white lapels, I took a step closer, squinting in the flickering