Free My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin by Lee Rudnicki

reaching for the bottle. He took a swig and spit at Sebastian. “It’s time. Give her to us. Now!”
    Tired of the games, Sebastian posed a question to Otto the Jackal that instantly changed the dynamics of the situation. “Hey fatso—does Fritz have a big ugly scar on his cheek? From a bayonet or something?”
    Otto looked up, surprised. “You saw Fritz?”
    Sebastian threw a wallet at him. “If those are his family members in those photos, then don’t wait around for your scar-faced buddy. He’s not coming home tonight.”
    The atmosphere in the Neptune crashed like a freight train. Then Sebastian pushed it one step further.
    “But there is a silver lining to this black cloud. Fritzy died in Berlin Cathedral, so he probably got to say goodbye to God on his way down.”
    The room fell silent. Otto sat down and wiped the tears from his eyes as he looked through the photos. The trickle of tears quickly became a downpour.
    Sebastian was confused by his extreme reaction. People were dying all over the place in Berlin; surely no German soldier could expect a life span that was measured in anything but minutes or hours—especially the SS. “What the hell is wrong with him?” he asked.
    “Fritz is ...
was
... his brother,” Varik said.
    “Oh ... sorry ...” Sebastian replied meekly, having just made the most significant
faux paus
of his entire life.
    Wolf slapped his forehead. Sebastian just killed any chance they had to accompany the SS to the airfield.
    Sebastian sat with his back to the wall and one hand on his rifle as the furious SS troopers organized their weapons and equipment. He crossed the line, but he had no way of knowing that the dead soldier was the Jackal’s brother. He just hoped that they would leave without another incident.
    When things calmed down, he poured water from his canteen into a cup. He gently turned Eva’s head towards him and lifted the cup to her mouth. Suddenly, Eva screamed and knocked the cup away!
    Pig Face looked up in horror as the tin cup clanged across the floor. “Shut her up! That bitch is going to get us killed!”

22

Recon

    As the Russian snipers searched for the machine gun position, Eva’s scream gave it away.
    The Germans are idiots
, Lyudmila thought.
They slaughtered our patrol and stayed hidden for hours. Now the dogs are more worried about carnal pleasures than the battle to come.
This is why we are slugging it out with them in the streets of Berlin and not Red Square
.
    Through the scope of her Mosin-Nagant rifle, Lyudmila spotted two German soldiers through the widows of the Hotel Neptune. She pulled Ruslan close.
“I found them. But we don’t have the firepower to take them out. Go tell Kolachenko. Quietly
.”
    Ruslan crawled across the roof and peered over the ledge. After three days of fighting, the exhausted soldiers in the alley were sound asleep. In the middle of them, Major Boris Kolachenko snored like a bear. With his big stomach, long hair, blue headband and eye-patch, Boris looked like a misplaced buccaneer. Ruslan would never say that to him, of course, as he might find himself assigned to a vanguard minefield clearing detachment.
    Next to the sleeping men, a truck carried the feared
Katyusha
. The Germans called the weapon “Stalin’s Organs,” because of the terrifying, screaming sound that the rockets made. The
Katyusha
worked well in Berlin because the Germans were in fortified buildings. Having no desire to see their men mowed down
en masse
, the Soviets lined up the
Katyusha
and other heavy weapons and pounded the German fortifications with high explosives until there was no resistance or building left. The weapon’s main drawback was its lack of accuracy. Of course, accuracy was much less of an issue in Berlin than was the ability to reduce a building to a steaming heap of rubble.
    Ruslan tried catcalls and whistles to wake the men who were sleeping around their beloved
Katyusha
to no avail. He wondered if even gunfire or explosions