Chapter Seven #9
Victor opened his mouth, struggling to shape the name, to give it voice.
Like a spell, a curse, it hung there, between his teeth.
It made him think of indigo plants, how beautiful they looked and how delicate they were, but how they also stained and blackened the fingers.
The name had taken root in his mind, staining.
A middle-aged man appeared at Erik’s side, out of breath and panting, his face pinched with mild confusion. He handed Erik a ticket, accepting in return another, and disappeared into the crowd.
“I will see you on board,” Erik winked and walked off, leaving Victor gapping.
Later, at the security queue, Victor noticed Erik a few paces ahead of him, already through the scanners. He did not seem to be carrying anything, no luggage of any kind. He scooped his passport, a very slim wallet and a lighter from the tray and slipped them into his pockets.
How did Erik look through the wired eyes of the machines?
Did anything betray that he was not normal, not human?
Victor had once feared his own monstrosity would glow red-hot on the scanners the first time he crossed borders in the twenty-first century.
Nothing. The machines stayed mute, letting them both pass and board the plane.
Like any other human. Two more unremarkable frequent flyers.
Onboard the plane, when he walked the aisle, searching for his seat, it did not surprise him to find Erik already waiting for him, occupying the middle seat in Victor’s row.
“You lied about your name.” Erik’s voice swelled, dimming the voice of the pilot, the cabin crew, the other passengers.
He turned in his seat to face Victor. There was no anger in his voice or in his expression, he just seemed curious, intrigued.
“When I asked for your name in 1944, you told me it was Tobias. Why?”
Victor had had his reasons to lie back then. Now it seemed silly.
“I—I’m not sure. I was scared. Or maybe I wanted him to live for a moment longer—through me.”
“So what do I call you now?”
Victor thought about all the names he had used over the years.
Sometimes, he kept ‘Victor’, changing only the surname; other times both given and family name were foreign; strangers he grew to know as the months progressed.
As a name, ‘Schwarzschild’ had died long before Tobias had raised the revolver and pulled the trigger.
The family of Victor’s youth resembled the posters propagating the German soldier, the German ideal: it looked good on paper, the colours bright and alluring; but in reality—dry and empty.
A promise of nothing. An honourable farce.
“Victor,” he said at long last. “My name is Victor.”
Erik smiled, satisfied.
“Victor,” Erik repeated, running the name over his tongue, savouring it, swallowing it like a sip of well-aged wine.
“It wasn’t so hard, was it? Finally saying the truth.
” Victor frowned at that, but Erik continued to speak while absently toying with his seatbelt.
“We cannot build a friendship based on lies, can we? I will give you my name in return.”
Emerick, a voice poured into his head, the syllables falling like rain, sending shivers through Victor’s body, much like the feeling when the night terrors found him.
He tried to repeat the name and could not.
As if giving voice to it would break the illusion, make the man sitting next to him—if he was a man at all—turn into a pillar of salt and shatter.
“You’re not human,” Victor did not bother phrasing it as a question, nor did he expect an answer.
Erik continued to smile at him, upper lip curled ever so slightly to reveal a hint of teeth.
An invisible hand brushed against Victor’s knee, the weight of a palm leaving a stamp over the muscle of his leg.
The gesture was playful, goading, in a way a lover would touch, to ground him after a harrowing evening.
Remember, we are friends, the voice came again, and with it the tap of fingers against the side of his head. I have been your friend for years. And you have missed me so so much, Victor. Oh, how you have missed me…
A friend…Victor kept his attention fixed on Erik’s face, memorising every line, every twinkle in his eyes, the way his body moved and yet did not. Seventy-odd years and he had not aged a day. A friend who never wrote.
“I have kept myself busy. I see you have been busy as well, Herr Forsberg. Chief baker at a no name bakery, stocking the ovens with bread, day after day after day. But here I am, now.”
“Why—how did you get on this plane? You weren’t bound to Bulgaria, were you?”
“No,” Erik shook his head, his gaze softened, and the ghost hands lifted off Victor as suddenly as they had come.
“That man, earlier? I persuaded him to give me his ticket in exchange for mine. I believe he got a first class ticket to Paris instead. I looked through everyone’s minds on the terminal until I found the one I needed.
Tedious work, really, but it did play in our favour. ”
“And if you had not found anyone to steal from?”
“I would have still got on this plane; compelled the staff, the flight attendants to let me through. Or I could have compelled only you not to board at all.”
“Why didn’t you? Seemed like the easiest option,” Victor said.
He, for one, would have chosen the latter; it was quicker and safer.
It also would not have confined him to be stuck in the air for hours.
If his friend wanted to talk, they could just as well have done that in Berlin, and spared themselves the theatrics.
“That would have been preferable, wouldn’t it?
” Erik echoed Victor’s thoughts, his voice cutting through the chatter and the roar of the engines.
“Pull you aside, find a secluded spot, just the two of us. Talk. I look into that beautiful head of yours, you answer all my questions like a finger puppet. But no, I wanted to leave, put some distance between me and Berlin. I needed time to think. I am in need of a distraction.”
You will keep me entertained, won’t you, Victor.
Victor shook his head; he was beginning to recognise when Erik invaded his mind, and he hated the sensation of it, however his friend was doing the trick.
No other lycan Victor met had that influence, that presence.
There was nothing animalistic about him, yet the longer Victor looked at him, the more devoid of human traits he appeared.
“I am a vampire, Liebling[26]. You know that or have you forgotten?”
Erik rested his chin in the palm of his hand, leaned back in his seat, looking at Victor with a kind of weary sympathy, as though they had already had this conversation.
“You have always known. I told you when we met. You said it was a bad joke, a Frenchman’s poor attempt at humour. That I was trying to impress you so you would let me go without proper identification papers.”
The fuselage of the plane shuddered, cutting through a cluster of clouds and into a dust storm. Specs of sand pelted the acrylic illuminator. The seatbelt sign lit up over Victor’s head. He could not make out anything through the illuminator. The sky was glowing orange with sand.
A sandstorm…over Europe? Despite the tempest raging outside, the shaking inside the plane was light, it would not wake him had he been asleep; it was more like the gentle rocking of a train.
It brought back a memory—he had been in uniform, soaked; it had been raining for weeks and his boots were always wet.
He and a few other men from his division were moving through the compartments, checking papers.
Two Frenchmen had boarded the train, their passes declared them as envoys, but Victor knew better: the ink ran where he tapped it with his finger; the stamps were wrong; the level of clearance non-existent.
Victor should have arrested them, instead he had guided Erik and his companion towards the door.
“But this is not what happened, is it? You were the one trying to impress me back then, Victor. Not me. You let me go, and that is how I found you later—in the snow, hurt,” Erik assured him.
He clicked his tongue; he seemed tired all of a sudden, the lustre had gone out of his eyes.
Tired and stock-still. The sandstorm outside was starting to die down.
Victor attempted to peep through the little window, but Erik’s hand had once more found its way onto Victor’s leg; it distracted him from the view of the sky.
“Memory can be such a fickle, fragile thing. So many threads to keep track of.”
“I…m not trying to impress you.” Victor’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Like a child attempting to talk for the first time, goaded by a parent’s enthusiasm. The sounds that came out of his mouth were slurred, awkward. He could taste copper and the stale ghost of tobacco at the roof of his mouth.
“I find that hard to believe, seeing how you have booked us a room with only one bed we are supposed to share. Really, Victor, you are not subtle at all.”
Erik suddenly stood up and ran a hand down Victor’s chest, leaving a wet trail over his shirt.
His face was dewy from the shower; droplets of water beaded and ran down his arms and chest. His hair was damp, tied in a bun at his nape.
The towel around his waist covered enough of him, but Erik had to keep it in place with one hand.
With his other one he pushed Victor against the curtains, forcing him to lean against the window—before Victor’s very eyes, the airplane cabin had dissolved and rearranged itself into a room.
The steam drifting from the bathroom was so inviting, Victor hadn’t had time to shower when they arrived, he had run down to sort things at the hotel reception and left Erik on his own.
Hotel…? Where are we?
“As obvious as you are, if I am not careful, I might actually fall prey to your charms in my vulnerable state.” Erik teased.