He tried to smile. “And yet it’s not as bad as you might think. I’m with him, at least, and when his illness returns he’s going to need me. I will always be there for him.”
And I? thought Greta. Am I going to be there for him when his illness returns?
The procession with the dragon and its followers had gone; suddenly, it was very quiet.
“There is something else we need to discuss,” said Karl into the silence. “Something more important than my personal problems. I heard it at the market this morning. It’s about the missing children from the country—you remember? Savini mentioned them during the trial.” He swallowed. “Now children have also gone missing here in the city. In the beginning I thought it was coincidence, but I’m no longer certain.”
Greta gasped. “You don’t think—?”
Karl raised a hand. “I don’t think anything. I’m a scientist. I merely observe. We’ve been talking about Tonio del Moravia, and children go missing. Just like in Nuremberg, and also beforehand, when the doctor traveled the empire with his master. If nothing else, it is at least . . . strange, I would say. Tonio wasn’t vanquished back then, and I’m sure his followers still exist. They might have gone into hiding, but they’re still around, just like their master.”
“You’re scaring me.” Greta stood up slowly. “I’ve had too much to drink for ghost stories today.”
She walked to the door, and Karl followed once he’d paid the tavern keeper. It was icy cold outside, their breath coming out in small clouds. They could hear the music and the cheers of the crowd in the distance; the procession had probably arrived at the cathedral by now. Damp mist rose from the river and covered the alleyways like a shroud. The bell of the Saint Livier Church chimed nearby; the outline of several mills emerged in the haze of the river, their wheels creaking in the current.
An eerie feeling overcame Greta. Hastily she turned west toward the Pont des Morts, the bridge leading across the river to Agrippa’s quarter. She shuddered. Why did the people of Metz have to give their bridges such awful names?
Bridge of the dead.
She was about to cross the bridge when Greta saw something strange in the shadow of the stone arches beneath the far side of the bridge. It kind of looked as if an additional pillar jutted out from the bridge. Greta blinked, then froze.
The pillar was moving, like the probing leg of a monstrous spider.
Greta stayed on the first steps of the bridge as if paralyzed. She suddenly felt stone-cold sober.
“What is it?” asked Karl.
She pointed across to the other side of the river. Now it was clearly visible: a man had stepped out from the darkness beneath the bridge. He was dragging something that Greta had first thought was a sack, but then, to her horror, she recognized what it really was.
A lifeless child.
They hurried across the bridge together, Greta’s mind whirling. A memory rose to the surface. She had suppressed it for a long time, but it had been haunting her nightmares for years. It had happened back in Nuremberg. Someone whose face she couldn’t remember had lured her beneath a bridge, to where a child had lain.
A child whose throat had been ripped open as if by a wolf.
Only moments later, the city guards had caught her right there and locked her up. They found a magical talisman in her pocket that someone must have slipped her.
The man with no face.
Greta remembered it clearly for the first time.
If Faust doesn’t come to me, then I’ll just take you, my dear. And when you’ve come of age I will mate with you on Blocksberg Mountain.
The words flashed through her mind like lightning bolts, long-forgotten memories. Greta’s heart beat wildly. Deep down she knew that below the bridge walked the same creature as back in Nuremberg—the monster that had done terrible things to her, things she had kept buried deep within her. Things that were now reemerging, like maggots.
Kiss my scaly skin. Feel the closeness of the beast.
She and Karl were the only people on the bridge; everyone else seemed to be at that confounded procession. Steps beside the bridge led down to the slimy, algae-covered bank of the Moselle. The steps were icy and slippery, but Greta still took several at once.
The man—or whatever it was—wore a black coat with the collar up so that they couldn’t make out his face. He was bent over the child now, looking as if he was caressing it. Greta stopped and watched, fear of the monster rooting her to the spot. Old memories wafted around her like poisonous fog, buzzed around her like angry hornets. It was almost more than she could bear, and her knees grew weak as the scenes of the past swept over her.
Kiss my scaly skin . . . if Faust doesn’t come to me . . . on Blocksberg Mountain, on Blocksberg Mountain, on—
“Get away from the child, you monster!” yelled Greta.
Fury and hatred gave her renewed strength. She drew the dagger she always carried and leaped at the man with the coat, but the strange figure slipped away as fast as a snake and disappeared beneath the arches of the bridge. The lifeless child remained on the rocky shore.
Greta glanced at it and shrank back with shock.
The girl was about five years old; she stared into the fog above with empty, dead eyes. Her throat had been bitten through, her pale skin ripped as if attacked by a wolf. Fresh blood oozed onto the stones, bright red against the gray and black surroundings.
Bridge of the dead.
“There he is!” called out Karl above her. “He’s running away!”
Greta hesitated only for a brief moment, then she turned from the bloodied child and raced back up the steps. The man had run up the stairs on the other side of the bridge and was heading toward
