Free Blood Red City by Justin Richards

Sumner.’
    â€˜Good luck with that,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘From what I hear he’s a very private person. He sees practically no one these days. Even your charms may be wasted.’
    â€˜One can but try. Unless you’d like to see if he’ll talk to an eminent curator of the British Museum.’
    Elizabeth was already absorbed in the documents on her desk. ‘Not really,’ she said without looking up. ‘There’s some interesting provenance on this axe-head I’d like to follow up.’
    Davenport nodded thoughtfully. ‘So could this artefact of Sumner’s be your Axe of Theseus, do you think? The same artefact? And if so, how did it end up in America with a different history?’
    â€˜If it did,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Perhaps there are two of these things. Which begs an obvious question.’
    â€˜Are the Vril after just one, or both of them? And why?’
    *   *   *
    The cat didn’t feel the heat. In the height of summer, the streets of Los Angeles were oven-hot. But the cat padded along them methodically, slowly but surely getting closer to what it was seeing.
    By late June, it had covered most of the enormous city, and was working its way out towards the suburbs. It was close – it could feel it. Rarely resting, occasionally eating, the cat had kept to the shadows. The closer it got, the less it wished to attract attention.
    *   *   *
    Even without Himmler, Hoffman was kept busy. The Japanese offensive in the Pacific seemed to be stalling, and there were rumours that the Russians were preparing to counterattack on the Eastern Front. Hoffman hoped that was true. He kept his real emotions and thoughts masked as he effectively ran several SS operations from Wewelsburg in Himmler’s absence.
    But eventually he got the chance to escape from the rigours and demands of the war.
    The whole of the forest was burning. It was only six years ago, but the flickering black and white made the images seem older. There was no sound on the film, just the chattering of the projector. They had warned him not to stop the film, or the celluloid would melt from the heat of the projector’s bulb. But he could play it backwards and forwards over sections he wanted to see in more detail.
    The images were distorted and given texture by the stone wall they were projected onto. Hoffman had not bothered with a screen. He stood beside the projector, occasionally walking closer to make out the detail. Occasionally slumping down in a chair. His eyes never left the screen.
    He had seen it before, seen most of the films before. But now he was looking for something more specific than information and enlightenment. An image that resonated in his mind’s eye. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure he had seen it somewhere else, before the Vril clawed their way inside his consciousness.
    This first film was almost like a shadow play. The dark silhouettes of SS soldiers against the pale flames licking up from the crash site. The trail of devastation composed a nightmare landscape of skeletal branches from shattered trees punctuated by small fires – a scar through the heart of the Black Forest.
    The cameraman didn’t get close enough for detail. Maybe it was too hot, or he was scared, or the SS team wouldn’t let him. Instead he recorded their retreat, carrying what they could salvage. Blurred, indistinct, some of it still burning.
    The second film was less frenetic. A calm, almost measured tour through the debris and devastation, lit by the pale morning light. The trail through the trees where the craft had come down was more evident. What it was that had crashed was not. The ground was churned up, blackened and charred. Roped off, waiting for the investigation team.
    Then suddenly, on the third reel, there was Streicher – the SS archaeologist brought in with his team at Himmler’s express orders to excavate