Free Götterdämmerung by Barry Reese Page A

attained but he was tenacious and calculating. If need be, he was quite willing to steal the work of others and take the credit for it. Indeed, it had been a clever bit of theft that had gained him access to the Occult Forces Project.
    Science had always been a means to an end. As a young boy, he’d sliced open kittens and performed awkward experiments upon neighborhood pets. He was sick. At his very core, he was a sadist and a monster. Science simply gave him access to tools of torture that he’d always lusted after.
    Resting on the cluttered desktop before him was a vial of the girl’s spittle. It was thick, more like mucous than saliva, and every now and then it pulsed with a peculiar kind of life. He’d been ordered to begin conducting research on it and he planned to do that but a truly strange thought kept interrupting his musings: why waste such power on a prisoner or a foot soldier?
    He snatched up the vial and took a deep, shuddering breath. A moment later and the stopper was gone, allowing the somewhat fetid odor to fill his nostrils. He turned the vial upside down and opened his mouth, allowing the foul fluid to drip down onto his tongue. He swallowed hard, trying not to retch… and within seconds, he knew that his life would be changed forever.
    His skin began to grow hot, as if it were burning, and his eyes swelled. He howled like an injured dog and fell to the floor, his hands hugging his torso. He was deathly afraid now, terrified that he’d gone too far, when suddenly everything went black…
    How long he floated in the darkness, he had no idea. He thought he felt the oily touch of unfamiliar nubby hands and the whispered gibberings of voices that were not human but he saw nothing save the stygian core of chaos, the true face of reality.
    “Wake up.”
    The feminine voice seeped into his consciousness, stirring him.
    “Wake up,” it commanded.
    Slowly, the world came once more into view and he saw that Sonya Schneider—or the thing that wore her flesh, at least—was standing beside him. She was nude, her firm young body looking particularly inviting. It was cold in his lab and tiny goose bumps dotted her skin and made her pink nipples stand out.
    Otto looked down at his hands and felt a stunned kind of horror settle over him. His skin was gone, leaving behind nothing but bone. He touched the ground and felt the floor, despite having no flesh with which to do so.
    “Do not be afraid,” Darhoth cooed. “You are beautiful. You stripped away all the artifice and now show your true self.”
    Otto rose to his feet, swaying unsteadily. He staggered over to a mirror and looked at his reflection, knowing what he would see but still compelled to confront the terror. His face was nothing but a skull with two deep holes where his eyes should have been. His clothing was different, too, looking like something from a children’s fairy tale: black cloth, with cloth shaped like white bones sewn where his ribs and chest should be. He wore a white belt that cinched his tight trousers and shirt together. Over his shoulders was slung an opera-style cape.
    “What am I?” he whispered. “How can I talk with no tongue… How can I see with no eyes?”
    Darhoth stepped to him and wrapped her arms about his waist. He could feel the heat from her body against his. “Magic,” she hissed. “The simplest, most complicated explanation of all. You are Mr. Death, a name that will please your Himmler and Hitler, I think.”
    The newly christened Mr. Death turned to face her. “I have power, don’t I? I can feel it… in my bones.”
    She stood on her tiptoes, leaning forward to run her tongue roughly against his exposed teeth. “You can kill with a touch,” she hissed. “And you are now immortal. Though you bear his features, the grim reaper can never have you now. You are beyond him.”
    Otto barked out a mad bit of laughter. He’d never been the most stable of men but now… now he was definitively unhinged.