Free Lycanthropos by Jeffrey Sackett Page A

of it. If the guard had been unable to stop this monstrosity with a machine gun, of what use would a handgun be against it? He remained motionless, hoping that the beast would ignore him, would go for Weyrauch or Louisa first and allow him to get to the door.
    Weyrauch and Louisa huddled together in the corner, silent and trembling, tears streaming down their faces, certain that they were not destined to emerge alive from the room; then the creature turned and ran back into the corridor, back into the cell from which it had just escaped. It looked up at the small window near the ceiling of the room and through the bars saw the bright moon and the few stars struggling to shine through the clouds. It tried to leap the twenty-five feet from the floor to the window, but fell short on the first attempt. It leaped again and this time it managed to grab hold of the bars. The creature looked down at the empty cell and snarled, and then, holding on to one bar with one hand it tore the other bars from their encasements. In an instant the creature crawled through the gaping hole, fled into the night and was gone.
    Schlacht, Weyrauch and Louisa did not move at first, did not display any emotion, did not react to what had just occurred. Then Weyrauch fainted and Louisa began to weep hysterically. A moment later she joined her husband in slipping into unconsciousness.
    And S.S. Colonel Helmuth Schlacht, relieved at being alive and largely unaffected by the familiar sights and smells of death, was smiling, astounding himself with the audaciousness of the plan which was even now taking shape in his mind.

CHAPTER FOUR
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    When Schlacht had been seven years old, he and another child had been caught in some silly childhood misbehavior by their teacher and had been sent to the school’s headmaster for punishment. He remembered the feeling of being a small boy standing nervously in the presence of absolute authority; he recalled quite clearly the way his small heart had pounded in his chest, and he remembered the almost audible churning in his stomach, the sick, sinking feeling; he recalled the way his legs had shaken inside his Lederhosen as he waited for the omnipotent headmaster to speak.
    These thoughts occurred to him because he was experiencing the same sensations at this very moment. He had submitted his report and had urgently requested an interview. He was standing, not at attention but not quite at ease, listening to the pounding of his heart, feeling his stomach churn, trying to keep his legs from shaking.
    There were differences, of course. What he feared now was not punishment but disbelief of his report and rejection of his proposal. He was not wearing Lederhosen , but the uniform of a colonel in the Schutzstaffel; and unlike his childish perception of the school’s headmaster, he now truly was in the presence of absolute authority, of omnipotence. There was only one person in Europe more powerful than the m an before whose desk Schlacht was standing; and even that one person, Adolf Hitler, deferred to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler in all matters of concern to Himmler’s two arms, the S.S. and the Gestapo.
    Heinrich Himmler did not look like a demigod, and no outward appearance or trapping of office testified to the enormous power this man wielded over millions, the power over life and, more commonly, death. The chief of the somewhat ponderously named Reichsicherheitdiensthauptamt, Main Office of the Reich Security Service, whose black-shirted minions had instituted a reign of terror over a conquered continent, resembled nothing so much as a pedant or a bureaucrat or the postmaster of a small village. The file folders which lay strewn atop Himmler’s desk might have been the daily traffic reports being reviewed by a local Bürgermeister , for Himmler looked suited for that role as well, with his small, round glasses, his balding head, his slightly paunchy stomach, his incipient double chin, his pursed lips