Yael didn’t just see the life leave Luka Löwe’s body. (Indigo eyes shining, dimming, snuffed. Jaw pulled tight, then going still. His final mask stripped away.) She felt it: Luka there. Then not.
How could someone so there be so gone?
It tore her—into yet another piece—with a pain not even the loudest scream could capture. Yael stayed silent, bowing over Luka’s body, letting her dark curls create a mourning veil around them. No one had accounted for the victor’s other guns, which, she supposed, was why he’d used his dying breath to remind her of their existence. Yael’s blood-coated hands found his second Luger, gripped it tight.
Six men was an impossible number to shoot without being shot.
Taking a life takes something from you.
—YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE—
Yael flicked off the safety.
“The blood. I can’t—” Reichsführer Himmler’s voice was oddly warped, as shrill as an out-of-tune violin. “Get this mess cleaned up! All of it! I want all of them gone!”
The skinshifter from the Chancellery Chat chair was the first to approach Yael. Her gun was in his hands, and because of this, he moved with lazy steps. Yael stayed crouched, gauging all the room’s marks through a part in her hair. If she timed her shots just right, she could take at least two, maybe three, of the Saukerls with her. Himmler among them, if she was lucky…
CRASH! The microphone clattered to the floor; the boom operator, fearing for his life, made a dash for the exit. The cameraman wasn’t far behind. Two versions of Hitler ran after them, guns drawn. Shots CRACKed through the studio, and both members of the filming crew fell—backs pierced with lead.
The skinshifter closest to Yael looked up at the wrong time.
She didn’t shoot him, but this wasn’t a merciful action. In his non-Hitler form, the Maskiertekommando officer was a muscley mass of a man—perfect for catching rounds. Yael swung behind him: Luka’s Luger out, exhaling death. The sound was the shattering inside her amplified. Bullets tearing tissue, biting bone. She fired around the skinshifter (who was already crumpling under his cohorts’ shots) at the pair of Hitlers by the stage.
Shot, change.
Shot, change.
They died, turned white, stayed dead.
The two skinshifters by the door turned from the production team’s bodies. Robbed of her human shield, Yael ran for the next closest thing: the Chancellery Chat chair. Within seconds it went from regal to ragged. The wood was heavy enough to take most of the shots. Yael was still alive as she pushed herself up against the shredded velvet, made the remaining ammunition in Luka’s Luger count.
She caught the fourth skinshifter in the chest; he fell.
The fifth and final Hitler dove behind the camera. Yael held her fire, realizing for the first time that she just might survive this, and if she did, she needed the film to be undamaged. She’d have to shoot the skinshifter from a different angle.
Yael lingered behind the chair, hoping he’d whittle away the rest of his cartridges at the splintered throne. When it became clear that he wouldn’t, she scouted the rest of the room. Apart from the chair and the camera, there wasn’t much in the way of cover. The only other shield she might use was sitting among the bodies of the Maskiertekommando, his bespectacled face just as ashen as theirs. The sight of so much blood had undone the Reichsführer.
Blood, of all things. That was why the floors of the medical block had been scoured clean for Himmler’s visits. The man who’d overseen the murder of nations was afraid of blood. Her hands were still covered in Luka’s—and when she reached Himmler, the man gagged. Yael crouched behind the Reichsführer, pushed her own pistol into the base of his neck.
“Get up!” She did not recognize her own voice. It was more than snarl—it was iron, forged by grief upon grief. It brought Heinrich Himmler to his wobbly feet.
She shoved him forward by his silver-threaded collar, scanning the shadows for the fifth skinshifter. She hadn’t heard him move, and he hadn’t managed a shot during her dash from the chair to his commander. Perhaps he’d been wounded.…
“D-don’t shoot!” Himmler ordered in his broken-strings voice. It echoed through the studio. Yael heard a rustling behind the filming equipment.
The skinshifter was still there. Waiting.
She hooked her arm around the Reichsführer’s neck and tilted her gun toward the camera. It was not Hitler who whirled out. It wasn’t even a stranger. It was Luka. Beautiful, dead Luka. His lion-gold hair burst into the light. His lips twisted into a snarl as he fired at Yael, hit her new human shield instead. His eyes were black, black as wrath in their sockets, but it was nothing compared with what Yael felt rising inside her.
The Saukerl had stolen the victor’s face in the hope that it would disarm her, make Yael hesitate long enough for the Maskiertekommando soldier to get a clean shot of his own.
It didn’t.
She knew her ghosts.
Yael pulled the trigger just as the Reichsführer collapsed beneath her. She watched a bullet pierce Luka’s chest a second, heart-splitting time. She watched the white wash him away; the final skinshifter fell to the floor.
Shot, change.
All of Yael’s senses roared. She stood in the center of the room, and the Luger was still in her hand, but there was no need for it. The only sound remaining was her heavy breath. Her noiseless scream.
The first body Yael checked was the one at her feet. The last enemy’s shot had shattered Heinrich Himmler’s spectacles and skull in turn. His was a quick, indelicate death.
Yael did not turn to where Luka lay, because she knew that if she did, she would not be able to keep going. She’d sink to her knees and sit there in her too-real nightmare until the other SS in the Ordenspalais overrode Himmler’s standing order “not to disturb” the Chancellery Chat filming.
No, Yael had to keep going. These five skinshifters were dead beyond doubt—features frosted, limbs already stiffening—but they only made up a third of the remaining Maskiertekommando. There were still ten men who could wear Hitler’s face and use it any way they pleased.
The Führer could not die. Would not die.
Unless Yael showed the world he already had.