Chapter 11

“You nearly had,” Rachel rasped. 

Rachel stuck her hand out. “Zigaretten. Bitte.”

He pulled out a cigarette, lit the cigarette in his mouth, and handed it to her. He pulled out another for himself. 

 She shook with the pain that remained. It had weakened her tremendously. She was gone in Limbo far longer than she had ever gone before. Far too long. A moment longer and she really would have been lost, and Schmidt would be standing over her soulless corpse. She was alive, but she could barely even lift the cigarette to her mouth. Sam saw this and helped her. He held her forearm to guide her hand to her lips.

“Thank you,” Rachel said once she had the cigarette between her teeth.

The blue sky and the brilliant autumn sunlight jarred her after the darkness.

“Well, what happened in there?”

Rachel laughed. “No rest for the wicked, huh?”

Schmidt smirked. Rachel took another drag and kept the cigarette in her mouth as she explained everything to Schmidt.

He shook his head. “I’ve heard rumors. But never in my wildest imaginations…”

“Mmm,” Rachel replied, blowing out a long puff of smoke.

Schmidt slumped as he took a seat beside Rachel. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. He just stared straight ahead. His eyes were blank and unmoving as if the things he saw in that sanatorium had finally soaked into his mind and broken loose the rusted gears of whatever other memories haunted him. He must have haunted memories, Rachel realized. What German man his age did not?

Rachel turned her gaze to the sky. The crows that were there earlier were long gone. The sky was a stark blue. Almost white. The sun was high and radiant. To break the silence, which had started to become a level of unbearable reminiscent of Limbo, she asked,

“What did you do during the war?”

Schmidt sniffed. He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, looking like he did not want to answer the question, but he answered it anyway.

“I was in the 10th Panzer division. I was an officer. Not a high-ranking one. I was in charge of a tank column.”

“You’ve seen a lot.”

Schmidt nodded slowly as he stuck his cigarette into his mouth and took a long drag. Keeping the cigarette in, he said, “I’ve seen a lot. France. Russia… Tunisia.”

He breathed out. “I’ve seen a lot.” He swallowed, and then his face twisted with pain. The pain of whatever horrid memories cycled through his mind. “I’ve done a lot,” he murmured.

He turned to Rachel and said, “Tell me — You’ve seen the other place. The afterlife — Is there a real chance of redemption for a person who has done terrible things in his life?”

Rachel considered his question for a moment. She considered his face and saw there of stoic grimness that suggested he already knew what the answer would be, just like the face of a man meeting his doctor for an update on the prognosis of a terminal illness. She thought of lying to him, to tell him that he should have hope. She never really had qualms telling a lie if that might give someone hope, but for some reason, now, she felt like she owed Schmidt the cold, harsh truth. She finished her cigarette, tossed it to the gravel, and answered, “Some sins are eternal.”

⛤ Chapter 5 ⛤

Tool kit swinging hand, her cane clicking as it smacked the cobblestone, Rachel limped with the tattered strength she had remaining towards the rector’s mansion to confront her. Every step seared, and every breath she took was a pained gasp. But she had to confront the rector.  She needed to mark the rector’s soul with the litany before she got away or worse, killed by Leah first. This was her chance to get her soul. To finish the job and finally get her piece of the bargain. All she had to do was get the rector to confess her crimes. Schmidt kept stride with her stilted march.

“There’s a proper way to do this, Doctor Blake.”

“What’s that? Buy her a one-way flight to Buenos Aires?”

“What do you expect might happen? What exactly do you expect her to do? Just turn herself in?”

“New evidence has since come to light.”

“Which is why we must follow proper procedures!”

Schmidt grabbed her by the wrist. 

“Please, give me a day to get a proper warrant from the judge. Otherwise, we have nothing.”

Rachel shot Schmidt a venomous glare. “Let me go, Herr Investigator. She is my client.”

Schmidt tightened his grip. “Genau. I understand that, but your investigation falls under the purview of the Bundeskriminalamt. Under my purview. And I’m telling you to cease.”

She let out a fit of frustration. She was so close to getting her soul. But in the excitement, she still recognized that Schmidt made a good point. She was likely not going to get a confession out of the rector. Not without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt anyway.

“Fine. Tomorrow morning then.”

Schmidt released her wrist.

“Tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, get some rest.”

Rachel nodded. She wagged her cane at Schmidt. “Don’t let me down, investigator. I’m going to have a hot bath now.”

The sky had darkened to a blood red by the time the bath was drawn. Through the bathroom window, the copper-colored castle floated in the black silhouette of the mountain like a dragon floating amongst dark storm clouds. The dying sunlight caused the toothed edges of the mountaintop pine trees to glow like a demonic crown. The city seemed asleep. Everyone was asleep, Rachel told herself. They had shut their eyes to the past, in the hopes of waking with the past forgotten. Soon she would show them how fraught with bleakness was their hope. One cannot simply will the past to disappear.

She let out a long sigh as she settled into the bathtub. Candles all around her flickered. She breathed in their scent and felt rejuvenation. Lavender and cloves and balsam, infused with a bit of arcanic energy. Magic meant to settle her mind. Aromatic magic she had learned from a Wiccan in London. She doubted the efficacy of such aromatherapy, but the scent was lovely.

Just as her mind was about to seep into a trance, she heard the doorknob of her front door turn, then she heard her door creak open.

Instinctively, she grabbed her cane, which sat at the side of her bath, and cursed at herself for forgetting to keep her ampoules near at hand.

“Who’s there?” she demanded. The bathroom door opened. Isolde, or rather, Leah in Isolde’s body, slipped through it. Rachel relaxed her grip on her cane.

“What are you doing here, Leah?”

Leah stuffed her tongue in her cheek childishly and shrugged as she grabbed a footstool and brought it over to the side of the bath. She breathed in the bath’s perfume deeply and remarked “That scent is marvelous.”

Rachel stared at her. “I’m trying to take a bath.”

“You’re doing a super job of it.”

“What are you doing here?”

Leah leaned against the rim of the bathtub. She dipped a finger into the steaming water and drew circles.

“I just wanted assurance that you will do the right thing.”

“Schmidt is getting his warrant as we speak. Once it’s approved, we will bring Doctor Fischer and her lot to justice. We will let the world know what happened at Odenwald.”

“That is what I like to hear.”

There was a peaceful daze in Leah’s voice. A resigned dreaminess of one nearing the end of a tumultuous existence. She had waited a long time to bring Doctor Fischer to justice, to shed light onto the horrors. Now, she was finally getting what she sought.

The bath was getting cold, so Rachel stood, grabbed the bathrobe off its hanger, and wrapped it around herself as she stepped out of the bath. Leah stood as well.

“I wanted to thank you, Rachel.”

“You don’t need to,” Rachel said as she used a towel to dry off her hair.

“But I want to,” Leah said. She stepped closer. The bergamot wafted off her neck. Rachel was shocked to find Leah’s hands moving towards Rachel’s bathrobe.

“Remember that kiss last night? I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It had me wondering, when was the last time you made love?”

Leah’s hands gently pried open Rachel’s bathrobe while she stood stunned. Leah’s eyes went down. Her smile grew. She went to kiss Rachel. Rachel retracted her head, inhaling then holding her breath.

“You’ve desired a woman for so long,” Leah said. “I felt it in the way you kissed. I saw it in the way you watched me make love to Isolde. You have a way of wearing your desire on your face. Subtle, but very telling to those paying attention.” 

Gently, she pulled the bathrobe off Rachel’s shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. It didn’t take much for Rachel to let her take it off. She had indeed desired some company for a very long time, and now she found herself in front of a tantalizing offer to satiate that desire.

Leah put her tongue into Rachel’s mouth. She pressed her body against Rachel’s. Rachel pressed back in response. She pressed her tongue against the intruding tongue, while she ran her hands up and down the spine of the person to which the tongue belonged. How she loved to kiss and feel the warmth of a kiss. Rachel sighed, turned her head to give a stretch of her neck for Leah to kiss, and Leah kissed it. She slid her tongue up that stretch of neck to her earlobe, which she then sucked on.

Every act, every sensation, every emotion stirred, joined in a maddened confluence of pleasure. A whirlpool of desperate desire. A desire that had been pent up for far too long, and now it came bursting out.

Leah led Rachel by the hand to bed. She pushed her onto it, then climbed atop her and kissed her aggressively. She started with the neck, then went to her breasts to swirl her tongue around each nipple, filling Rachel with tendrils of ecstasy.

She put a hand between Rachel’s thighs. She slid her finger between the lips. “A delicious fruit,” said Leah, then she went down for a taste.

The touch of a woman was a feeling long lost in the dark shambles of Rachel’s memory. A pleasure among many other pleasures that the drudgeries and the shadows of life had all too fervently pushed away. It wasn’t that Rachel didn’t yearn for love. She did of course. She just never had the time to pursue it.

As soft wet lips and a warm tongue touched her mound, Rachel couldn’t stifle her moans. She moaned loudly. The pleasure was turbulent. It crashed like thunder.

Soon, Rachel felt it come like flood water from a collapsed dam. Her muscles seized up. She tightened up while the pleasure forced its way through her in powerful pulses. She cried out. She went blind from the pleasure.

“How was that?” Leah asked.

“Beyond words,” Rachel breathed.

Leah climbed up Rachel’s body, to lay atop her with her chin nestled between her breasts. She gave a tepid smile, gave her breast a peck and, her face turning alarmingly sad said, “I’m happy you enjoyed it.”

Once her mind had floated down from the evanescent heaven of her orgasm, she knew she had to give Leah back what she had received. She had to give that tormented soul a taste of heaven, but she was still clothed. She still had on her coat even.

“Stand up,” Rachel ordered.

Leah snickered as she slid off the foot of the bed to stand. Rachel sat up and clumsily plucked at Leah’s coat buttons.

Leah laughed and brushed Rachel’s hand away. “Here let me do that,” she said and deftly unbuttoned her coat. She shimmied the coat off, then slipped off her blouse and then her pants, then Rachel pulled her back onto the bed and climbed atop her to unclip her bra from her breasts and draw her panties off her legs to make her naked like that oil painting nude in Madrid. Rachel ran her lips and tongue down Leah’s body and Leah moaned and writhed and moved her head from side to side with each of Rachel’s wet kisses until her hair was a messy veil for her face. Her legs went open and she pushed Rachel’s head down between them and she cried out – she might as well have howled – by what Rachel did with her tongue.

Rachel finished her off, then crawled up into her reaching arms, pressed herself against her quivering, heaving chest, and kissed her blushing face.

Leah fell asleep at once and while she slept, clung onto Rachel like a keepsake. Rachel stayed awake. Her insomnia was in full swing. After coming down from her ecstasy, her debilitating pain returned. The knives of soul-death made her soul scream. It was worse than she had ever felt it. She had reached the end of the rope. Burning any more arcana would spell the end of her soul. That meant Sabine Fischer was her last hope – her very last hope to avenge her sister.

Rachel turned to look at the beautiful face of the peaceably sleeping woman beside her and suddenly remembered that there was another soul she could mark. The soul right next to her had already confessed, in fact, and already dispossessed from her body. Leah Graf was the easiest mark Rachel could ever possibly hope for. 

Rachel sat up. Her heart began to race. Sabine Fischer was the greater evil. Leah was a victim of her evil as much as an accomplice. But Leah was right here. All she had to do was speak the Soul Hunter’s Litany, then the pact with Sam would be satisfied. She wouldn’t have to hunt down another soul again, save for the one that killed her sister.

Leah stirred in her sleep. A small smile grew on her face. A smile of a woman at peace, but a woman who had done terrible things, a woman who has committed eternal sins. A woman who has damned herself. It was Rachel’s only absolute assurance of avenging her sister before she lost her soul forever.