by T. Frohock
His answer remained locked in his throat. Juanita wasn’t simply Guillermo’s wife. She was his angelic adviser and as such also reported directly to the Thrones, those otherworldly creatures that commanded the lower angels, the Messengers such as Juanita.
What if these nightmares mean I’m damaged in some way? Broken? No longer useful to Los Nefilim? Will she tell the Thrones? And then what will they do? He considered asking her, but he feared the answers would be worse than his uncertainty.
He opted for humor. “The last time an angel sought a connection with me, I wound up with a son.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“That was a joke.”
“Ah.”
“I’m not doing this well. I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t trust you. In my head”—he touched his brow—“I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“But here”—she touched his heart—“you are anxious.” The compassion in her gaze made him ashamed he took so long to respond.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat and nodded. “And that is why it has taken me so long to come to you. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. I understand. You have suffered terribly under angel and daimon alike, but this is a simple spell. I’m going to place sigils, here, here, and here.” She touched the center of his forehead and then each temple. “These will connect our souls so I can evaluate your condition as you dream. I’ll see what you experience. That way, I’ll be able to diagnose if there is an external spell that makes you forget the images upon awakening. That is all.”
I’m being foolish. Regardless, hearing the explanation eased his nervousness. Just as she’d probably known it would. “Okay. Let’s just get it over with.”
“Relax,” she whispered. Her finger raised chills over his flesh as she designed first one glyph and then the next. When she completed the lines of the final ward, she sang an ethereal note. The midnight fire of her song flashed through all three sigils in hues of blue and black.
Diago’s scalp tingled from the indigo crown that now encircled his head. He found it hard to keep his eyes open. But that is what she wants.
As Juanita hummed, the azure of her irises seeped into the whites until her eyes resembled twin orbs of lapis lazuli. Thin veins of gold indicated her mood by swirling lazily through the blue.
“This is similar to hypnosis,” she murmured. “I will take you down into sleep by adjusting my voice until I find the vibrations that best affect your brainwaves.” Her timbre changed as she elucidated through one set of vocalizations and then another. Diago could tell by the subtle variations that she utilized all three sets of her vocal cords. “When I find the correct pitch, you will begin to dream, and then I will follow you into your subconscious. Now close your eyes.”
It wasn’t hard to obey her.
“Think about the music you hear when you sleep. Try and conjure the song.”
Engulfed by darkness, he listened. Silence met him, as deep and impregnable as the void. Then, from far away, he caught the first isolated notes of the violin. It was his Stradivarius.
Louder now, as if sensing his presence, the music drew near. The bow attacked the strings (Diago recalled making those quick jabs: strike, strike, strike, followed by a smooth pull) before slurring the chords into decay. The intro descended into pallid notes, gray and soft like fog (no, the smell of cordite is strong in the air . . . it is not fog but smoke) drifting over the muddy ground.
The dream solidified, taking him deeper into his subconscious. The faint outline of a château appeared behind broken (burned) trees, shrouded in fog . . .
“Smoke,” Juanita whispered.
Smoke.
The song’s tempo slowed to become a dirge. Diago walked the scorched field. Lumps of clay (bodies) littered the ground. In the distance came the steady percussion of drums (bombs), shaking the earth with furious thunder.
Squinting through the smoke, he perceived a shadowy figure pushing a tram filled with corpses. The arms and legs trembled as the wheels jittered along on the hastily laid tracks of war. One hand opened to release a silver disc that sank into the mud.
Then the bow resumed its attack and punch against the strings (quick jabs: strike, strike, strike) and the night came down and the world went black and silence descended quick and hard, like the stillness that follows the falling of a bomb.
Diago opened his eyes. His heart pounded and for one wild moment, he thought of Guillermo’s Creed Model 7, churning out messages in staccato beats. He became aware of Juanita’s strong hands, pinning his shoulders to the cushions.
“You’re safe.” She eased her grip and caressed his cheek. “Take a deep breath. In through your nose, out through your mouth, slowly, slowly.” She gentled him until his terror subsided beneath her touch. “There.” She wiped the sigils from his brow. “Are you okay now?”
He fumbled for his handkerchief and sat up, wiping the sweat from his face. “Yes. No.” A shaky laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “I’m not very helpful, am I?”
“You did fine.”
The phone rang, and someone picked up an extension elsewhere in the house.
Juanita went to the sideboard and filled a glass with two fingers of liquor. She put the drink in his hand, and he threw back the shot.
“Was that the music you hear each night?” She took the glass and placed it on the table.
“There are subtle variations, but it’s more or less the same each time.”
“I sensed a presence, but it was distant, diffuse, neither angel nor daimon. I’m not sure what to make of it.”
The black pin is in my brain. He rubbed his eyes.
Juanita continued. “However, there was no spell to prevent you from remembering your dreams. Does the imagery mean anything to you?”
“It’s a memory from the Great War. I was on that battlefield.” But not the house . . . no house had been on that field.
Juanita touched his shoulder. “It’s not unusual to be tormented by past engagements. Nefilim suffer from prolonged battle stress just as mortals do. Did anything noteworthy happen during that fight?”
“Noteworthy,” he repeated dully while rubbing his forehead. He found it hard to keep venom from seeping into his words as he answered her question. “Aside from the sheer magnitude of the death toll?” A sudden image flashed through his mind: huddling in a trench as shells exploded around them. Cold and wet and eaten alive by lice, he’d shut his eyes against the mud falling like rain and when he opened them again, someone’s scalp landed at his feet . . .
“Diago?”
He jerked himself free of the memory, uncomfortably aware of his clammy palms. “I don’t know what you want from me, Juanita. After so many days of battle, they all seemed the same.” A never-ending misery.
She sat beside him and mercifully didn’t pursue the issue. “Don’t push yourself too hard. You should remember any new dreams now. More details will come to you. It might be tied to a past incarnation.”
That’s something I can deal with. Too, her words brought up something he’d always wondered about and gave him a convenient way to shift the conversation from himself. “Why can’t we see clearly into our past lives?”
“In spite of your supernatural nature, your brain is organic. It can only hold so much information. You’ve been reborn what? Five times since your firstborn life?”
He nodded.
“Can you imagine if all those memories came crashing down on you at once?”
He saw her point. “It would be overwhelming.”
“Precisely. So your brain gives you the facts necessary for your immediate survival and supplements those facts with newer memories when they’re needed. It’s the same way you didn’t recall much of your firstborn life as Asaph until you met Guillermo. You were wary of each other without knowing why, but the longer you interacted, the more memories surfaced.”
“Do you think that is what this is? Another broken relationship from
a past incarnation?”
“It could be.”
Someone knocked at the door.
“Just a moment,” she called, but she made no move toward the door, keeping her attention on Diago. “Since your memories of your firstborn life as Asaph are almost complete, I would guess this is the result of a more recent incarnation, maybe even the previous incarnation to this life. The answers to those questions are inside of you.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “I think I understand.”
“Good.” She went to the door.
Miquel stood in the corridor. “Everything okay?”
“Yes.” Juanita smiled at Diago. “I think we made some progress.”
Diago summoned a smile of his own. Judging from his husband’s expression, it looked as ghastly as it felt.
Miquel hesitated as if he might say something else and then thought better of it. “I’m going to get Rafael. You finish here.”
“I’ll be right out.” Diago stood. “Thank you, Juanita.”
She kissed his cheek. “Don’t wait so long before you come to me again.”
“I won’t.” It was an easy lie. He almost believed it, and he was pretty sure she almost did, too.
Guillermo rapped his knuckles against the door. He held the briefcase in his other hand. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
Diago pocketed his handkerchief. “No, we’re done.”
“Good. That was Grier on the phone. He wants to play. You’re going to Germany, my friend.”
Diago went to the door. “When?”
“Monday.”
Three days. “Why so long?”
“I need to arrange the details with Rousseau.” He handed the briefcase to Diago. “Meanwhile, happy reading.”
4
Later that evening, Diago finished tidying Rafael’s room and admired his son’s art while the child finished his toilet. Colorful drawings of their life in Santuari covered the walls: Guillermo’s bulls in the pasture, Ysabel’s hair flying behind her as she chased a fútbol, Miquel playing guitar, and Diago kneeling beside Rafael, teaching his son the daimonic art of shaping stone.
In each illustration, the sun or moon possessed an angel’s wings, which flowed downward to encircle the various scenes. And that is how he sees his mother, Diago thought as he noticed the draft of a new drawing on Rafael’s desk. The sun, the moon, the stars . . . he thinks she is always watching over him.
Diago touched the bright yellow disc in the drawing and thought of Candela with her dark, dark eyes. She had promised to give him a song to bring peace to the angels and the daimons, a song only he could understand, and she had. If only she hadn’t resorted to rape to get her way, he might have found something other than shame for their time together.
From down the hall, the toilet flushed and the bathroom door squealed open. Within moments, Rafael entered the bedroom, dragging one leg behind him. He chided his little white cat with laughter in his voice. “Stop it, Ghost.”
Ghost hugged Rafael’s ankle and held on to her prey. Rafael giggled and yipped when her sharp teeth tweaked his tawny skin. “Help me, Papá, she’s got me.”
The sight of them coaxed a smile to Diago’s mouth. He snapped his fingers. “Ghost, be good.”
The cat responded to the noise and twisted away, scampering out of sight, only to come running back, bounding across the bed at full speed. Without pausing, she launched herself at Diago. He caught her midair and cradled her in his arm, stroking her fur and humming until she calmed.
“You do that really good, Papá.”
“That’s because it’s time to get quiet,” he whispered. Settling the cat on the bed, he turned to his son and noted splashes of water soaked into his pajama top. At least the weather is still warm. He’ll dry off in no time. “You washed your face?”
“And my teeth, too.” He bared his teeth. “Will Miquel be home soon?”
“Maybe. Don Guillermo needed him to work late this evening.” Diago didn’t elaborate. Miquel had driven toward the western fields at sunset. The less their son knew about those activities, the better Diago liked it.
“Who is going to stay with me when Miquel has to work late and you’re gone?” That was the third time he’d asked a variation of that question in as many hours.
Diago hadn’t considered how worried Rafael would be about his leaving. Nothing to do but keep reassuring him. “Eva will come and stay with you. You like Eva, don’t you?”
“Oh yes! She is very nice. We play fútbol and she says I am so good that I should be able to play for Barcelona someday. Do you think I’m good enough to play for Barcelona, Papá?”
Relieved the conversation had shifted to fútbol, Diago smiled. “You’ve got a long time to think about whose team you want to join.”
Rafael went to his nightstand and retrieved a small box. Resting on a bed of velvet was a carmine stone about the size of a marble. It was an angel’s tear, all that Candela had left to the child before she had abandoned him to the care of the nuns in the lunatic asylum.
Placing the tear between his palms, Rafael knelt beside his bed and recited the prayers the nuns had taught him. Diago watched in silence, glad Miquel wasn’t there. Privately, his husband encouraged Diago to find a way to stop the ritual, but Diago refused. When Rafael outgrew the custom, he would release it. Meanwhile, the child found comfort in the motions and the words. What harm can come from it?
Rafael finished and kissed Candela’s tear. He held the stone up for Diago to kiss. Instead, Diago clasped his son’s small hands between his palms and pressed his lips to Rafael’s forehead.
For a long moment, as he did every night, Rafael searched Diago’s face. “Do you think you will ever love Mamá?” he asked.
Someday I may forgive her, Diago thought. To his son, he said, “Maybe.”
“Was she mean to you?” He put the tear away.
Unsure how to answer the question, Diago turned back the covers, avoiding his son’s eyes. How could he explain Candela’s enchantment without making the boy doubt his mother’s love for him?
I can’t. That is the answer. I cannot. “It’s complicated,” he said and consoled himself with the fact that Rafael was too young to understand. “One day when you’re older, I’ll explain it to you.”
Rafael climbed into bed. “Father Bernardo says that all nefilim reincarnate and that we’re born over and over again. Is that right, Papá?”
“It is.”
“Will you always be my papá?”
“Yes.” Diago sat on the edge of the bed. “This is why our firstborn lives are so important. Our angelic or daimonic parents make us supernatural. When we die, our spirits fly free to seek a mortal womb in which to grow a new body, and from there we are reborn. So because I helped create you in your firstborn life, I will always be your father.”
“I know that. But will you always be my papá like you are now? Here to teach me. And Miquel. Will Miquel be my papá when I’m reborn?”
“Ah, I see.” He considered the question and realized he had no idea how to answer that either. “I don’t know if I will be your father again. I do know that the attachments we form in our firstborn lives are the strongest and often bring us back to one another in similar ways. Don Guillermo, Miquel, and I have encountered one another in each incarnation, but being a father is a new experience for me. I hope I am your father again.” Because you have changed my life.
“I do, too. Ysa says she wants her papá again, too. She still loves him even though he won’t let her be a spy.”
Diago resisted the urge to ask Rafael what precipitated Ysa’s debate with her father. While Rafael likely knew Ysa’s side of the story, Miquel would have all the facts. “First she has to learn to follow orders.”
“Do you follow orders?”
“Yes. I work harder than most nefilim at being a good member of the Inner Guard.”
“Because we’re half daimon?”
“That’s part of it. Others have cause to distrust me, becau
se I acted badly in my firstborn life and they remember. I must now prove to them that I’ve changed.”
“How do you do that?”
“With my behavior.” Diago kissed his son’s forehead. “It is time for sleep.”
Rafael wiggled his arms free from the sheet for a hug. “I love you, Papá.”
“I love you, too.” He hugged the boy and shut off the bedside lamp. At the door, he paused. “Oh, and one more thing, you never play in the western fields, do you?”
“No, Papá. Even Ysa won’t go there. Don Guillermo said he would be very, very mad.”
“Good. That’s very good. That’s one order you never disobey. Good night, Rafael.”
“Good night, Papá.”
He closed the door and stepped across the hall to the room he shared with Miquel. As Diago dressed for bed, he listened to Rafael recount his day’s adventures to his cat. Each night he talked himself to sleep as if silence left him too much room to think.
Tonight Rafael must have been tired. The child’s voice faded earlier than usual.
Unlike his son, Diago was wide awake. The drowsiness that had dogged his day was gone. Excited by the prospect of the assignment, he withdrew the briefcase Guillermo had given him earlier in the day and found the tattered copy of Theozoology.
Opening the book to the first page with its primitive drawings, he leaned against the headboard and tried to absorb Lanz’s reasoning, searching for a way into Karl Grier’s head. He took a few notes and didn’t notice the time until he heard Miquel’s truck rumble into the yard.
The front door opened and shut. Moments later, Miquel entered the room. He closed the door and kicked off his shoes. Climbing into bed beside Diago, he thrust his head between Diago’s nose and the book. “How do I smell?”
“Like Juanita’s shampoo.” Diago tugged one damp curl.
Grinning, Miquel sat back and snatched the book from his hand. “What are you reading?”
