Except when absolutely necessary Colonel Ingrid von Schitt seldom made the conversion from a human vampire into her bat form. After transforming into a bat a few minutes ago she flew over a forest stretching kilometers in all directions. Midnight had fallen, along with all her schemes.
Himmler would be livid when he found out, but von Schitt had much to do before breaking the news. Two problems of a more immediate nature faced her: she would be naked once she changed from a bat back into human form; and she desperately had to find a telephone to marshal her troops. If she could accomplish that feat Hex and Monika might get caught in the conspicuous stolen Mercedes he drove. The secluded hunting lodge, where the recent bloodshed occurred, boasted niceties like running water and electricity but no phone service. Finding clothing became essential. A stark naked woman, even if she was a colonel of the Vampire Korps and a titled baroness, could not ask to borrow a perfect stranger's telephone without elaborate explanations she was in no mood to give. She might have flown back to the lodge in the middle of the forest, robbed the dead of their uniforms, except those were soaked in blood. Dressed in bloody garments would require as many, or more, explanations than appearing nude.
The baroness wanted to follow the Mercedes but never in her life would she be able to outfly the powerful car Hex piloted like a madman. Originally she'd tried. The forest trail leading from the lodge to the highway took approximately half an hour to reach. She hovered nearby when Hex and Monika decamped. They left less than five minutes after she made her changeover. That son of a bitch Hex had even fired a shot at her. He was an expert marksman and the silver .45 bullet he had discharged came within inches of her right wing. When he got the girl into the Mercedes they raced along the trail faster than Trommler when he initially left the road heading up to the lodge. Why should Hex care anyway if he tore the Mercedes to hell? It wasn't his car, he'd not have to account for damages to any motorpool. She wanted to follow them back down the path to see if they went west or east on the road. Maybe she could have gotten a fix on their direction at least, but Hex didn't have the slightest respect for property of the German high command. That staff car would never run right again if the Nazis recovered it!
So von Schitt flew toward the nearest village to the west of the lodge. She gambled and chose west over east because she had a hunch he would not drive back to Munich. Once she reached the village she'd have to improvise. If Hex and Monika headed west too she might encounter them again before the end of the night. Von Schitt would have more difficulty explaining to Herr Himmler she had had to abort the mission and lost some personnel rather had she accomplished it with the same loss of life. She still had a chance.
But the Obergruppenfuhrer was the least of her worries.
Personally she cared less Himmler's two majors were dead, but she held Hex accountable for the deaths of four of her goon girls, even if three of them hadn't died by his hand. Von Schitt would mourn her two lovers Astrid and Erika forever.
Finally she left the coniferous forest behind, her sense of time acute. With her wings beating furiously she knew she had little more than seven hours before the sun came up. At dawn von Schitt needed to be ensconced in her coffin to escape the light of day.
A village came into view and when she located telephone poles she circled in the air. If she couldn't get anyone on the phone at this hour she'd have to commandeer a car. Bats don't actually possess radar but von Schitt's echolocation detected an object beside a small house toward the end of a winding lane, made her descent. She relied on her night vision, it increased exponentially when she became a bat. The village had phone service but no streetlights. Perfect! As her altitude decreased she found an ideal place to land, a tree in the yard of the house in question. From her perch on a limb she did indeed see a car parked in a little driveway.
The occupants of the house slept however she didn't want to encounter a wide-awake dog guarding the premises. She'd get no help by killing someone's pet. The colonel's heightened senses detected no animal sleeping or roaming so she sailed down and lit on the yard, converted back into a human woman. The grass wet with dew under her feet and an unfriendly chill in the nocturnal air are not discomforts to the undead. Urgency of mission sent her quickly to the front door upon which she beat frantically.
"Help, somebody please help me," she cried out.
Ordinarily she would have ripped the damned thing off its hinges and entered and slain anyone who got in her way taking what she wanted. And Himmler ordinarily didn't object to the Gestapo kicking down doors and brutalizing citizens. But von Schitt knew her goon squads fell under a different category of the SS; Himmler preferred the Vampire Korps maintain a lower profile and had intimated as much to her in Munich, especially concerning this occasion. If the tawdry mission failed she was to hush it up. She couldn't claim mission accomplished since Hex chased her off under threat of death. Had she possession of the film taken of Monika (a cunning man like Hex would've destroyed it by now) she'd report in all honesty a successful conclusion, give or take a few lives.
So von Schitt deemed it best to take the long way around, a soft entry. She cried out again for help. A light came on in a front window after another powerful hammering on the door. By the time it budged open a crack she heaved with sobs.
Monika Fuchsmach wasn't the only girl who could act.
"Please help me, I've been raped and left on the roadside."
The door opened completely. An ancient man stood in the doorway clutching an ancient revolver. How quaint, thought von Schitt, that hunk of iron pre-dates the Great War. The colonel made an effort to conceal her nakedness with an arm across her large bosom and a hand over her crotch, not out of modesty but necessity. She had a tale of woe she needed to sell.
"May I come inside?" said a sobbing von Schitt.
The man stepped to his right immediately to let her in. He discarded the revolver on a desktop, as if embarrassed by it. "I am afraid of Nazis," he said apologetically.
From another room a girl asked: "Who is it, pappa?"
"Hurry and bring a robe for this poor woman, Adelheid." The man turned away as if not to shame the naked lady by staring at her. With his back to her he asked, "Frau, will you be all right? What is your name?"
"Freida, mein herr," Ingrid von Schmitt stammered. "Do you have a telephone, I must call---" she stopped herself before she said police--- "my husband."
A plump young Rhine maiden, perhaps fourteen, came into the room holding a brocaded nightgown, half-asleep until she laid eyes on the nude woman with the mannish hair in her living room. Von Schitt ignored the robe the girl held out to her, she wanted things to progress at a swifter rate. These two needed to hurry up and help her. Adelheid continued holding out her hands until von Schitt finally accepted the robe and wrapped it around her.
"Where is your telephone?" she asked them. When neither responded to her question she went hunting it herself, they lived in a small house. "Is it in your kitchen?"
"Yes, by the stove, Frau, you are welcome to use it." The old man yawned, "Forgive me, you woke me up."
"Pappa, you sounded rude."
"So I did. Frau Freida, I did not mean that the way it came out. Please make yourself at home."
Adelheid stepped into the kitchen while von Schitt dialed the operator from a wall-mounted telephone. "Would you like me to make coffee, tea? It's no trouble."
The old man echoed his daughter's words, adding, "I also can offer Schnapps, if you need it."
"Pappa!"
"No coffee, but I will have Schnapps," interjected von Schitt, waiting for an operator.
The girl poured a glass with a reproachful look at her father, carried it to the colonel, who held up the drink and toasted him. "Danke schoen, mein herr." Father and daughter alike probably thought she gulped down an unladylike amount. She said curtly, "Can you give me some privacy?"
The two residents looked at each other in surprise. The old man recovered first, nodded and led Adelheid down a hallway, an arm across her shoulder. The colonel paid no attention to them or their whispers. She finished her Schnapps before the operator came on the line, a thin faraway voice in her ear. She eyed a clock on the wall. 0030 hours, she thought, I made good time, but doubtless Hex reached a paved road five minutes ago.
