My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin - Chapter 17
Eva
Wolf peered through his binoculars at the blasted stretch of grass surrounding the cathedral. The once-manicured Lustgarten was now a graveyard, littered with decaying bodies and the scorched, skeletal remains of his Panther tank. The open grounds had given the defenders of Berlin Cathedral a brutal advantage—nothing could approach without being seen, nothing could charge without being cut down. They had repelled every assault so far. But the sanctuary that had shielded them was also a tomb in waiting. Their citadel had become a cage. There was nowhere left to run.
“There are worse places to die,” Sebastian said quietly.
“I’m not dying here,” Wolf muttered, turning away from the window, his voice edged with steel.
“Alright.”
Wolf scoffed, jaw tightening. “I’m not about to give you a bullshit morale speech. We’re in a bad spot. The tank’s a smoldering wreck. The rest of the crew are dead. And we’re trapped in this cathedral with half the Red Army closing in.”
Sebastian gave a slight nod.
“But we suffered a direct hit. It was impossible to get out of that burning tank alive. And impossible to sprint across an open killing field and make it into this cathedral alive. And yet—here we are.”
“Yeah.”
“So, we take a shot at impossible miracle number three. We try to get out of here, and if anyone gets in our way, we handle it. One step at a time. We make it or we go down fighting. On our terms.”
“We won’t make it two steps out that door before we’re cut down. The Russian snipers haven’t blinked.”
“We’re not going out,” Wolf said. “We’re going down.”
“You’re suggesting we hide? That’s how we make a stand?”
“No,” Wolf said, leveling his gaze. “Listen. When the air raids got bad in ’43, the Führer ordered all the cellars in Berlin connected. Escape routes, in case buildings collapsed. Those tunnels are real. And if one of them reaches this cathedral, it’ll be through the crypts. If we find a way in, maybe—just maybe—we can make it back to German lines.”
“If they’re still there,” Sebastian said. His tone wasn’t bitter—just tired. He wasn’t afraid of dying, but he saw little point in stretching it out for no reason. Reaching another position might buy them a few more hours. Nothing more.
Undeterred, Wolf moved out, his boots crunching over broken glass and charred debris. Sebastian slung his rifle over his shoulder and followed. They were veterans—trained, tested, and hardened by years of war—but the fear clung to them like soot, thick and undeniable.
Ammunition was scarce. Hope, even more so.
Sebastian made his way to the cathedral’s centerpiece: a towering altar carved with baroque flourishes, its gold leaf tarnished by smoke and age. The intricate angels and saints etched into its surface seemed to weep beneath layers of ash. At its base lay a crumpled body in black—the uniform unmistakable.
He rolled the Waffen-SS trooper over and immediately recoiled. A deep, jagged scar ran down the man’s cheek, grotesque and recent.
“Someone carved him up,” Sebastian muttered, his voice tight.
“He got off easy,” Wolf said from behind him, the bitterness sharp in his tone. The Waffen-SS had earned no quarter. Wolf hoped justice found them in death, the kind measured in equal weight to the horrors they unleashed across the continent.
Sebastian knelt and rummaged through the corpse’s gear. He grabbed a few ammo clips and a worn leather wallet, tucking them into his pack. Then something in the rubble caught his eye, a small silver crucifix.
“Look at that. It’s silver,” he said, a flicker of wonder breaking through. “That’s probably worth—”
“Nothing,” Wolf cut in flatly. “It’s worth absolutely nothing. Ammo, food, water—those are the only things that matter now. Stay focused. The mission is survival.”
Wolf disappeared into the shadows ahead. Sebastian slipped the crucifix into his backpack and followed him.
The stairwell into the crypts was narrow and cold, carved from centuries-old stone that smelled of damp earth and decay. At the foot of the stairs, Sebastian paused. The silence pressed in, heavy and ancient. Slowly, he reached into his coat and pulled out a delicate golden locket.
With careful fingers, he opened it.
Inside were the eyes of Greta and little Sophie—his wife and daughter—forever frozen in a moment of joy. Greta’s smile was gentle, full of warmth. Sophie, no more than three, laughed at something just outside the frame. It was the only photograph he had left. The last unbroken piece of the life he’d lost.
Sebastian stared at it, unmoving, as memories of Dresden surged up. Sunlight through curtains, the sound of music from the shop downstairs, the scent of bread. A world of soft mornings and small miracles that was incinerated in a single night.
Sebastian wondered how many others had lost everything. How many photographs buried in rubble? How many names erased by fire? He closed the locket slowly and tucked it back against his heart, then moved into the darkness.
Thirty meters away, Wolf rummaged through a shadowed corner of the crypt, where ancient boxes, moldy books, and forgotten trash lay piled in disarray. He found no sign of a tunnel—no miracle passage to salvation—but he did find the next best thing.
Water.
He pried the lid off a barrel with a grunt and peered inside. The surface was dark, still, and surprisingly clean. Without hesitation, he cupped his hands and drank, the cool liquid hitting his throat like a blessing. He drank again. And again. When he could drink no more, he yanked off his helmet and plunged his head into the barrel, submerging himself in the icy relief. For a man who hadn’t bathed or slept properly in weeks, the shock was almost euphoric.
“Do you plan to swim out of here?” Sebastian called out.
Wolf raised his head and shook it like a dog, flinging droplets in every direction.
Sebastian’s laughter echoed through the crypt like a hymn of madness. Wolf joined in, and for a moment, they were just two men—no longer soldiers, no longer survivors. Just men, laughing until the tears came. It was absurd, and maybe that’s why it was so perfect.
Maybe it really was that funny. Or maybe it was the release of two years’ worth of fear, grief, and tension, an eruption of emotion that couldn’t be suppressed any longer. In that fragile sliver of time, their mission, their weapons, the war itself, all of it vanished, drowned in helpless, cathartic laughter.
For a heartbeat, Sebastian imagined the sound as music—warped, dissonant, but human. It wasn’t Mozart. It was something broken. But it was real.
Their combat awareness plummeted. They had no guard, no plan, no perimeter. In that moment, their combined sense of danger hovered somewhere below zero.
And that is when a hand touched Sebastian’s shoulder.
Sebastian screamed and sprang back, his boots skidding across the stone as his rifle misfired. The shot ricocheted into the ceiling, sending a spray of plaster and dust raining down. Wolf instinctively dove behind the water barrel, yanked up his MP-40, and swept the crypt with his sights, ready to kill.
“Don’t shoot!” Sebastian shouted, breathless.
Standing before them, illuminated faintly by the flickering torch light, was a girl.
She looked no older than seventeen, maybe eighteen. Strikingly beautiful in a way that didn’t belong to this ruined world—like something remembered from a dream. Her high cheekbones and luminous skin gave her an otherworldly elegance, framed by thick, cascading red hair that fell past her shoulders in loose waves. There was an unmistakable Eastern European quality to her features—refined, timeless, unsettling in their perfection.
She wore a pure white nightgown, impossibly clean, its hem grazing her ankles. Around her neck hung an opal pendant that shimmered faintly in the dimness, catching glints of broken light as if it held a fire inside. She was barefoot, her pale feet quiet against the cold crypt floor—oblivious or impervious to the shards of glass, stone, and bone that littered Berlin’s ruins.
She didn’t speak. She just stared at them—still, silent, and utterly out of place in a world that had burned away all innocence.
Wolf instinctively aimed his MP-40, but the second his eyes landed on her, he didn’t fire. Something about her—maybe the eyes, maybe the stillness—stayed his hand. Just for a second.
“We can’t help you,” he said sharply. “Go home.”
“They are coming for me,” the girl whispered, her voice laced with a foreign accent—soft, strange, and almost melodic.
“Get away from us,” he barked.
“They are coming for me,” she repeated, trembling now. Her arms hung at her sides, limp, but her hands twitched ever so slightly. She was terrified, but not of them.
“They’re coming for all of us, fräulein,” Sebastian said gently, lowering his rifle. His gaze softened. The idea of the war swallowing another innocent life made his stomach turn. He’d seen too many like her, lost, broken, and empty-eyed. Maybe she was just shell-shocked. Maybe worse. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Eeee-va.” The name came out slowly, each syllable drawn from deep within, as though even speaking it took great effort. Her voice was toneless. Her eyes were fixed on nothing, locked in some space between worlds.
“What are you doing here?”
“We’re not bringing her with us,” Wolf snapped, stepping between them.
“Major, she won’t survive alone. Judging by her voice, I’d say she’s Romanian. She’s a long way from home.”
“We’ve been through this,” Wolf said, his tone clipped. “You can’t save everyone.”
“We need to get her to safety.”
“Safety?” Wolf laughed bitterly. “There’s no such thing in Berlin. You’d be safer in a tiger’s cage with a ham strapped to your chest.”
“I want to do the right thing.”
Wolf turned on him. “When did this war become about doing the right thing?”
Sebastian didn’t hesitate. “The night Dresden burned,” he said, voice flat.
He knew it was madness. But leaving her here felt too much like leaving Sophie behind in the flames.
Wolf fell silent. That name—that city—cut through every argument. Dresden was the edge of the world for Sebastian. It was where everything ended. And once it was spoken, nothing more needed to be said.
Wolf exhaled slowly and looked away. The firebombing that had killed Sebastian’s wife and daughter had left a wound too deep for time or reason to touch. After Dresden, no logic, no order, no command could matter more than that grief.
As the soldiers stood in silence, weighing their next move, Eva’s gaze shifted. Her eyes widened, as if seeing something only she could. Without a word, she raised her arm and pointed—slow, deliberate, almost entranced—toward the bookcase.
The air seemed to change—cooler, heavier, as if the crypt had inhaled.
A single leather-bound volume shuddered, as if struck by an invisible breath, then slid free and fell to the floor with a dull thud.
The men froze, eyes fixed on the book.
Neither spoke. In a war filled with flame, death, and unspeakable horrors, a flying book hardly made the list of urgent concerns. It wasn’t screaming. It wasn’t exploding. It wasn’t trying to kill them.
Sebastian stepped forward cautiously and picked it up. The cover was cracked and soft from age. He thumbed through the yellowed pages. “It’s a songbook,” he murmured. “I used to teach music. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something.”
“When you get out of the army, do yourself a favor,” Wolf muttered, scanning the crypt. “Don’t become a detective. You’re too fucking dumb.”
Sebastian glanced up and smiled faintly.
Eva remained motionless, still pointing.
They approached the bookcase. Wolf examined the shelves with a soldier’s caution, checking for wires, hinges, anything that might be a trap. Finding none, they gave the frame a shove. The bookcase groaned and toppled sideways, revealing a hidden door set into the stone.
Wolf immediately raised his MP-40, his body coiled and alert.
Sebastian reached for the handle, pausing a moment before pulling it open. The hinges creaked, and a cool draft spilled into the crypt. Behind the door, a narrow staircase spiraled downward into blackness.
The air that rose from below was different—damp, metallic, laced with something old and earthy, like soil that had never seen light. There was a hum too, barely audible, like a vibration felt more than heard, as if the stone itself was remembering something.
Wolf let out a breath. “Genius…” he said, almost in disbelief.
Sebastian turned to Eva, gently taking her hand. Her skin was cold. He looked at her with a mix of awe and gratitude.
“You’re an angel,” he whispered. “Our guardian angel.”
My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin - Chapter 18
Not far from Berlin Cathedral, the remnants of a shattered Waffen-SS company holed up in a suite at the Hotel Neptune, a garish relic on the Unter den Linden.
