Jörg’s mind melted into a burning pain, and the world around him went dark. He felt his body being lifted and carried away, but he couldn’t guess where to.
That foul stench faded, and when Nil’s presence disappeared, he felt something warm encase him. It had a familiar feel to it, but he still couldn’t see anything. Gradually, the pain faded.
He couldn’t see an exit, and although he wanted to escape, something resisted him.
A long time passed before light finally pierced the darkness.
Jörg found himself in a dimly lit room, gazing at sunlight filtering through a window. He appeared to be lying down in a bedroom. A sudden sensation overcame him, as if his head had been grabbed and shaken. Jörg worried that someone might be attacking him, but there was no pain in his body. His vision just seemed to sway.
“You slept for quite a long time,” a voice said. The shape of a large man entered Jörg’s unsteady view of the world. The shaking finally subsided, and the figure solidified in the center of his vision.
Jörg gasped. The person standing in front him was the Serbian werewolf, Milos. He wasn’t wearing his military uniform like before, but the clothes of the migrant workers Jörg often saw in Germany.
“Why are you here?” Jörg asked.
“I’ve been watching you this whole time for the Count. On the condition that Xandra sell me her medicine at a discount.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Two years.”
“Two years?!”
“You’ve been asleep for two years.”
“I was unconscious?”
“It would be more accurate to say you’ve been trapped by Nil’s magic. It’s still affecting you.”
“Is that why I can’t move?”
“You can’t move. But your body can.”
“What does that mean?”
“Pay close attention to your surroundings when the world moves. You’ll see what I mean.”
Jörg’s eyeline suddenly rose, and Milos vanished from sight. His surroundings no longer shook, but Jörg couldn’t choose where he looked, and his line of sight would shift suddenly. He could only focus on whatever was directly in front of him. It felt like he was sitting in the passenger seat of a car and letting the driver choose the destination. Seeing the way his vision moved, Jörg finally understood.
He was inside someone else’s body.
Trapped… In other words, Nil had probably forced him inside another person. It was like when Edmund Jansen had almost trapped Lila. Maybe Nil had even used the same magic. The height of his eyeline didn’t feel strange, so Jörg figured that whoever this was must be about as tall as he was.
He didn’t recognize the surroundings. The person Jörg was inhabiting moved toward the window to look outside, and Jörg realized he was in Berlin—the city he’d visited so many times to collect information and buy food. He was positive.
Milos stood next to him but stayed silent. It seemed as though this person Jörg was in couldn’t see Milos.
“Are you invisible?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the other man replied. “Right now, I only want to talk to you.”
“Who is this person?”
“He’s you.”
“What?”
“Right now, you’re inside your corpus. You could even say you’ve returned to your old body. It was pretty cruel of Nil. He trapped you inside there, but you and the corpus don’t share the same mind.”
Jörg cursed. “Where’s Nil now?”
“I don’t know. The Count is looking for him but hasn’t had any luck so far. Xandra made some medicine to separate you from your corpus. I’ve been feeding it to you these past two years when your corpus was asleep, but I’ve yet to see any results.”
“How in the world? And Berlin is—”
“Doing fine, thanks to Lila’s skillful handling of the food supply. It’s hard to believe she’s just a child. She kept in contact with women from all over to keep food production and transportation going.”
“Production? I only asked her to look after the transportation.”
“She’s managing something much larger now. She’s borrowing a parcel of land from the Count’s old dominion to grow food. It lets her increase the amount she has, even if only a little.”
“That’s a great idea!” Jörg exclaimed. “It’s so much better for her than spying!”
“I agree. She’s seems much happier, too.”
“By the way, how involved is my corpus in Berlin’s revolution?”
“The organization has tasked him with minor jobs: printing flyers on mimeographs, distributing them, communicating with other revolutionaries in Russia, that sort of thing… But he’s really committed. When he speaks in public, the authorities practically come charging toward him, and lately he’s started using some more extreme language.”
Jörg let out a groan. “That doesn’t sound anything like me.”
“The Count thinks the ancient blood has influenced your corpus, too.”
“That’s what Nil wanted. I was trying to keep it in check.”
“Vlad was someone who never stopped fighting the people who enslaved his homeland. If that fervor has tied itself to the German revolution, your corpus won’t stop until the German government falls.”
“Either way, I need to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“Yes, that would be for the best. Keep taking the medicine and try to control your corpus from within. Now that you’re awake, you should be able to control it a little.”