I maintained my cocky swagger until I left the sight of the bar patrons before breaking into a panicked sprint.

  I needed run and hide as fast as possible if I had any hope of survival. Now that I was on their radar there were literal gods that were going to delight in hunting me down. Their powers were unmatchable and their followers legion; elves, dwarves, werewolves and regular human followers of Wotan, the Wotanvolk, were going to be out in droves searching for me. I was as screwed as one decidedly non-magical human could be in this crazy world.

  Normally, in a situation like this, I would have made for the nearest CIA safe house. I knew of one only a few miles away in an abandoned factory. But that pointy eared bastard had used my code name; he had known far too much for me to trust any of the official assets in Wotan’s territory. Elves weren’t exactly wizards at counterintelligence (they were more likely to be actual wizards) but I was sure that at least a few members of Germany’s old intelligence community were working for Wotan now. They would have all of safehouses wrapped up tighter than an obese mummy. I needed to go somewhere else.

  Once I had put some distance between me and the bar, I ducked into a shadowy alley to turn my jacket inside out and jam a knit cap over my blond hair. Just maybe they would be too busy looking for a blond guy in a black jacket to notice a hatted guy in a blue jacket.

  With my impromptu, and inadequate, disguise in place I walked back into the gloom gathering street. One of the tricks to not being chased is to not look like someone worth chasing. As opposed to my earlier flight I now moved in the amble of someone who had a place to be but did not need to get there too quickly.

  I kept my posture hunched and my face tilted towards the ground. In a population as beaten down as the one under Wotan’s rule, a suitably defeated posture was necessary to survival.

  Behind my carefully blank face I mentally ran through everything I had ever learned about escape and evasion. The instructors at Langley were a bunch of hoary old spies, veterans of the fights against Islamic terrorism, North Korean communism and even Soviet socialism. There was nothing they didn’t know about eluding human pursuers; too bad many of the things chasing me weren’t human.

  I made for the Elbe, the river running through the middle of Dresden. It is believed that at least some magic is interrupted by running water. However, the maddening part of dealing with magic was the inherent uncertainty involved with it. There about a thousand different magical schools and traditions and they all worked in a different way. Trying to apply the scientific method to magic was a lesson in futility. That was probably why many of the scientists who have attempted to craft some grand unifying magical theory have gone completely insane. The only humans who did magic and kept their mind did it small and focused.

  As I walked over the Washingtonstrasse Bridge I made sure to ditch my now useless underarm shotguns into the Elbe’s dark waters. They were only good for one shot each and, if stopped, would identify me as an American spy. I hadn’t seen any signs of pursuit, but that meant nothing. Those old spies who had taught me never had to deal with invisible KGB men or flying terrorists; and they also wouldn’t have been sacrificed to the Old Gods if they got caught.

  “I should have worked at McDonald’s,” I muttered under my breath as I mentally catalogued my resources which were somewhere between ‘jack’ and ‘shit’. I headed for one of the more populated sections of Dresden. Maybe I could hide in the crowds long enough to buy me a few more minutes of life. Joining the CIA began to seem like a tragically poor life choice.

  I had never planned to become an international man of mystery/human sacrifice. It is not as glamorous as it first appears. The pay sucks, the working conditions are intolerable, and you can’t even brag to pretty girls about your job. If you are lucky; you might just get the chance to travel to exotic destinations where you can spend your time avoiding all of the lovely locals’ attempts to find and kill you. Even before I joined the Agency, I had suspected all of this and never wanted to be a spy. The whole lifestyle had seemed just too constraining.

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  Then the Resurgence happened and my life, as well as the lives of everyone else on the planet Earth, changed for the worse.

  Night inched closer and the crowds I needed for camouflage would soon disappear into their hopefully safe houses rather than face the terrors that now haunted the darkness of our world. I had maybe fifteen minutes to get off the streets before I would stand out like an ogre in a dwarven brothel. The Wotanvolk (or Volk for short), would have me soon after… or a vampire would get me, rumor was that old One Eye kept a few on the payroll. I wasn’t sure which of those would be worse.

  Aztecs. Aztecs would have made it worse. Those deities had earned every bloodstained inch of the flayed human skin wrapped around their reputation. And that was before they had discovered modern conveniences like chainsaws and acetylene torches. The recruits that the Agency sent into what used to Mexico had to be either crazy or lusting for vengeance, preferably both. Luckily for me I had entirely the wrong look for that kind of work. My tall, blond ass got sent to the realm of the Teutons, where I could have the opportunity of dying by the blood eagle rather than having my limbs chain-sawed off one at a time and thrown into the village stewpots.

  I did have one option though.

  I hurried down the street and tried to blend in with the diminishing crowds. The address was one I had memorized when a first came to Dresden and found out that she still lived despite it all. Five minutes before the sun dropped behind the horizon a came to a building that must have been all so fashionable and modern in that hip, European style once. It had been stripped of paint and adorned with clotheslines, hand-made windmills, signs of protection and the other accoutrement of modern Europe. Instead of chic it just looked shabby. Like an art student that had become a hobo. Speaking of which…

  I could see her unlocking the door to her apartment as I approached and though she had her back to me I could tell that it was her. Kristina Altendorf was small and dark, entirely un-Germanic looking despite the name. Though she tried to hide it with a shawl that her great-great-grandmother would have worn while laboring to pay taxes to the Kaiser, I knew that she was quite beautiful. I had dated her after all.

  If I had told any of the intelligence professionals who had trained me of my intent, they would slapped their foreheads at my stupidity and likely executed me on the spot. “You’ll blow your cover, idiot!” they would have screamed as they pulled the trigger, and they would have been right. I was James Bonding it and one thing we learned in spy school was to never James Bond anything.

  We actually watched a couple of the suave British spy’s more memorable films just so the instructors could point out everything that old 007 did wrong (there was a lot, it was demoralizing). Don’t use your real name, don’t stand out, don’t wear a suit and tie to a fist fight, don’t bring a Walther PPK to a gun fight, don’t sleep with women who want to kill you, don’t stay at the nicest hotels, etc. Like I said, demoralizing. Revealing yourself to someone who knows you while out in the field and blowing your cover was also bad spycraft.. I really had nothing to lose though, but my cover had already been blown and my entire network compromised.

  I couldn’t believe my luck that she was home. If she hadn’t been there then my only other option probably would have been to hide in a dumpster overnight. The fact that I had arrived at the same time she had was even better.

  Once she had fully unlocked the door and started opening it, I covered the final few yards between us in a low rush. Kristina must have heard my footsteps at the last second because she was looking over her shoulder just as I crashed into her and forced her the rest of the way into her apartment. She went sprawling to the ground with a strangled scream and the bag of groceries that she had been carrying scattered across the hardwood floor. I ignored her for a second, slammed the door closed and then quickly looked back out into the street through the peephole. It was basically empty. I hoped no one saw me assault a woman in front of her own home. After a few seconds passed and no one rushed forward to save the maiden from the brute a let the tension stored in my shoulders bleed out.

  I’m safe, then I turned back around I looked down the barrel of a snub nosed .38 revolver.