Where Oblivion Lives

by T. Frohock

  The bigger nefil redirected him back toward his goal, guiding him through the crowd. “How are you sleeping?”

  “Better.” That was a white lie, but if Guillermo knew the truth, he might end the assignment before it began. Too much is riding on my success. “The music is still there, but it’s not as intense. Maybe because of the protection in Prieto’s tear?” He held up his right hand, where the ring protruded beneath the leather of his glove.

  “Maybe.” Guillermo didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t argue the theory. “Just in case it’s not, though, stay on your guard. Call us if you need anything. Everyone has been instructed to accept all charges.”

  “I will.”

  “Your French contact will meet you at the station in Strasbourg.”

  His contact would be a cigarette vendor, wearing a red bow tie. “We’ve planned for at least four different contingencies, all of which seem to be more in line with soothing Rousseau’s nerves than getting me over the German border.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If Rousseau is comfortable that all the protocols have been followed, we keep our ally. Leave her no cause for complaint.”

  “I’ve done this before, you know.”

  “Not as a part of our organization you haven’t.”

  “So you keep reminding me.”

  “That’s my job. Questions?”

  “No.”

  They paused beside the hissing train. The boarding call went out across the platform.

  Guillermo offered his hand. “Be safe, my friend. And trust me to take care of matters here.”

  “I will.” Diago shook his hand, feeling the strength of Guillermo’s grip complement his own. “Watch for me.”

  “Always.”

  They released each other, and Diago boarded. In the aisle, he was forced to squeeze past a couple in the process of exchanging an ardent parting embrace. A sudden pang of envy clouded his eyes. He wondered what it would be like to openly kiss Miquel in public and not disguise their gestures as whispers.

  Ducking his head so no one would see his jealousy, he brushed past them and took a seat at the back of the car. Once he had settled on the bench, he touched his cheek where Miquel’s kiss lingered against his skin. Just as the members of Los Nefilim were forced to live discreetly among the mortals, so was their love.

  He consoled himself with the thought that like Los Nefilim, their love thrived.

  The engine exhaled a gust of steam and gave a little jerk, pulling him from his melancholy thoughts. The train moved away from the station as if already exhausted by the trip. As they rolled past the city, brittle sunlight leaked through the grimy windows and caught the dust motes swirling through the air.

  Barcelona faded into the distance.

  Diago shifted his weight in the seat and felt something prick his hip. Unable to remember what he might have placed in his pocket, he reached into his jacket and removed a tarnished silver brooch.

  He looked at it curiously. An intricately carved angel stood over a lyre. In the left hand, he held a fractured emerald set within the silver. The setting in the right hand was empty. The angel possessed three sets of wings and the feet of a raptor.

  An accurate depiction of a Messenger in his true form.

  A chill passed through Diago. Rubbing his thumb over the blackened silver, he managed to make out the inscription on the banner over the angel’s head: Amor vincit omnia.

  Love conquers all.

  How did it get into my pocket? It didn’t come from Miquel. While his husband often showered him with gifts, he would never give Diago something so ruined.

  So then who? Running his finger over the delicate engraving, Diago thought back to his walk through the station. A man had bumped into him.

  Did he follow me onto the train? Diago surveyed the other passengers. Twelve mortals occupied the car with him. A woman with two small children sat opposite a pair of priests. Businessmen and people with no discernible trade occupied the benches. Engrossed with their newspapers, magazines, hushed conversations, or the view outside the windows, none seemed to notice him.

  Nor did any of them resemble the man who had shoulder-checked Diago. Or did they?

  Would I even know him if I saw him again? All he recalled was that the man wore a fedora pulled low over his eyes.

  Why? Because he didn’t want me to see the preternatural radiance in his gaze? They had brushed against each other, not hard enough to stop either of them, but with sufficient contact for the man to slip something into Diago’s pocket. And distracted with my son, I didn’t see his eyes.

  Diago cursed under his breath. He had no idea where the man went after that. For all he knew, the stranger wasn’t on the train. He might be stalking Miquel and Rafael at this moment. And what if he caught them?

  Then he might be in for the fight of his life. Backed into a corner, either of them would be a formidable opponent. Besides, Guillermo and Suero were with them. What Suero lacked in power, he more than made up for in cunning.

  Diago calmed himself. His family was fine. He had to believe that and keep going. Every decision he made from this point forward proved his worth to Los Nefilim. To go back meant he didn’t trust Guillermo to protect his family. Others, like Carme, would see his return as a dereliction of duty.

  This is a job. Focus.

  Maybe the answer to the mystery lay within the brooch. He returned his attention to the pin. In spite of the grime, the emerald twinkled in the sunlight.

  Juanita said he’d crippled himself with his dependence on mortal measures, and she was right. It was time to rectify that.

  The gem was his clue. Whoever had owned the brooch would have left vibrations from his life in the striations of the emerald. The ability to read those patterns was a daimonic skill—one at which Diago excelled.

  He removed his left glove and placed the pad of his thumb over the emerald. A whiff of meadowsweet floated through the open window. Beneath the scent of the herb came another odor so faint it was barely there, but once he recognized it, he couldn’t deny the smell of blood.

  Diago lowered his head. Another serendipitous glance around the car assured him that none of the mortals paid him the least attention. He removed the glove from his right hand.

  Tracing a sigil of protection over the brooch, he hummed a low note. The vibrations of his vocalization charged the sigil. If someone approached him, the spell would awaken him.

  Anyone passing him would see a well-dressed man taking a light nap. A few of the more sensitive mortals, lesser nefilim with a touch of the angel-born in their souls, might notice a pale halo around his body, which they would attribute to the coach’s natural light.

  He was as invisible as he could make himself.

  As Diago hummed, a slender line of silver emerged from the angel’s tear in his ring. With no effort on his part, the magic entwined with his song and supplemented his spell.

  Not one to scoff at an added level of protection, he closed his eyes and purposefully kept his mind blank. Fingering the ridges of the emerald, he allowed himself to sink into a shallow trance.

  The motion of the train, rolling over the tracks, lulled him even deeper. He heard nothing other than the low murmurs of the mortals in his coach.

  The vision began suddenly, startling Diago with its force—

  He stands in a room ravaged by his song. Frigid air chills his lungs. The drifts of snow (parchment) around his feet are all too real. Rushes, freshly woven into mats and sprinkled with meadowsweet, can’t quash the odor of scorched glyphs tracing veins of silver over the stone walls. Tapestries lie crumpled against the floor, splashed with blood (ink). A quill lands by the open window; the feather trembles like his heart.

  In the courtyard below, soldiers talk as they load the dead into a cart. Their voices don’t rise to his room. It is as if they stand in different worlds.

  Perhaps we do . . .

  The quiet yawns between them, a terrible sound that is no sound, interrupted only by the occasio
nal crackle of dying sigils. Outside the chamber, the shrieks have ceased, but he hears more guards coming. He doesn’t know if they are friend or foe. It doesn’t matter, because he can’t stop them. His throat is raw. He tastes blood on his lips.

  The angel’s sigil over his heart blazes so cold it burns. The pain brings sweat to his scalp and dampens his hair. He somehow remains on his feet. But not for long . . . I cannot endure this.

  In the courtyard, the soldiers finish loading their wagon and push it toward the gate. A corpse’s arm slips from beneath the tarp. A silver disc falls from the hand. It is a brooch. The twin to the one he wears.

  The door to his room slams open. A soldier strides across the floor, kicking debris out of his way. A box ricochets off the wall and splinters in two: the lid flying in one direction, the body in another. The mirror it once contained is already broken, a million shards of light, spinning through the air.

  “What have you done?” The man is hoarse with rage. With a powerful hand, he grabs the back of Diago’s neck, startling him deeper into his terror. The sigil flares across his chest. He lifts his hand. The blood he smells is his own.

  Then the world flushes white with a burst of agony. Now I can die.

  But he doesn’t. He screams with the last shreds of his ruined voice. Still, he does not die, no matter how he tries, he cannot die, and his cry grows higher in pitch until it becomes . . .

  . . . the train whistle. The long blast wrenched Diago out of the vision. The brakes locked, adding to the shrill dissonance in his head.

  Diago opened his eyes just as his body pitched forward. He clenched the brooch in his fist. The pin cut into his palm, drawing blood. Twisting hard to the right, he fell to one knee, catching himself with his forearm against the opposite bench. His gloves tumbled to the floor, and his bag struck his thigh.

  The train shuddered to a halt. Mortals cried out, more from shock and fear than from pain. One of the children began to cry.

  Diago knelt, his heart rapping his chest. Drops of sweat fell from his hair. The scent of his own fear gagged him.

  It was almost a full minute before he wrestled his jangled nerves into submission. He snatched his gloves off the floor with one trembling hand and stood. He should have seen the owner of the brooch in that vision. But I saw myself.

  A neighboring passenger turned to him. “Are you okay?” The man gestured to Diago’s hand. “You’re bleeding.”

  He palmed the brooch with his right hand and slid it into his pocket. Fishing a handkerchief free, he pressed the cloth against the shallow wound. “I’m fine. Yourself?”

  “A few bruises. Rattled nerves.”

  All across the car, others rose gingerly. No one seemed to be seriously harmed.

  The man gathered his loose papers, which had scattered on the floor. Diago helped him.

  A porter entered their car. “Everything is fine,” he said as he maneuvered down the aisle. “Please remain in your seats. A car is stalled on the tracks. They’re moving it now and we’ll soon be on our way.”

  Diago handed the last of the papers to the man, who thanked him. As he returned to his seat, he reached into his pocket and ran his finger over the brooch. The tapestries, the mats on the floor, the clothing of the men in the courtyard—all of the images indicated the twelfth century.

  It’s a memory of a past incarnation. Of that he was certain. Diago tapped a thoughtful rhythm on his thigh with one restless finger, like a cat twitching its tail. The image of the disc, falling from someone’s hand, was present in both the vision and his nightmares.

  A disc the exact size and shape of this brooch. Diago withdrew the pin and examined it again. This piece of jewelry had belonged to him in a past incarnation, of that much he was certain. Had someone worn a mate to the pin? The man who put it in my pocket, maybe?

  Maybe. But that didn’t answer the question as to how the brooch still retained so much of Diago’s essence. Even if he’d owned it in the twelfth century, the brooch should have gone through any number of owners from then until now. In that case, he would have gotten a vague sense of his past life intermingled with the experiences of everyone else who’d come in contact with the pin. But never in a vision as extreme as the one I just experienced.

  Like the nightmares, the vision had hit him with the force of an attack. Which likely means that whoever deposited the brooch in my pocket has interests hostile to mine. And he knows I am bound for France.

  Diago swore under his breath. The last thing he needed was complications with Rousseau. He had to determine whether he was being followed before he set foot on French soil. If he found the other nefil, then he intended to extract answers from him. By whatever means necessary.

  Diago switched trains at Girona, and then again at Figueres. Each time, he watched the crowd. At both stops he left the stations and wandered into alleys, choke points intended to reveal anyone shadowing him. By the time he reached the Portbou Station at the French border, he was certain no one followed him.

  Which means the nefil remains in Barcelona, or I’ve lost him. As he passed a public phone, he paused and debated calling Guillermo’s house to report the incident. And what do I tell them? A man, who I cannot describe, bumped into me, and then I found a brooch in my pocket that led to a memory of a past incarnation in the twelfth century? And once they had the information, how could they possibly advise him?

  He hesitated beside the phone for another moment and then decided to forgo calling. I’ve got to show them I can handle the situation. If something of importance turned up to supplement his facts, he’d have ample opportunity to call Santuari and let them know. For now, he would remain on guard, gather more information, and complete his assignment.

  With his decision made, he moved toward the desk where a handsome young Frenchman in a crisp uniform waited to process travelers through customs.

  It was time to focus on the Grier brothers.

  30 August 1932

  the angels are falling

  7

  Santuari, Spain

  Guillermo dreamed of a great marble staircase shadowed with moonlight. A hall tree squatted to one side of the entryway. Angels were carved into the mahogany; they writhed around the frame with mouths full of black.

  Hanging over the hall tree were the tattered remains of a medieval standard. On a field of gold an eagle with a lyre in one talon and a blood-red cross in the other decorated the shield of arms. Three crimson fleurs-de-lis surrounded the shield.

  A loud bang broke the silence. The walls shuddered with the force of the tremor. Two more ferocious crashes followed the first. From somewhere deep within the house came the slow and hypnotic beats of a death march played on timpani. Clarinets and tubas entered the arrangement. Cellos moaned—softly at first and then louder—joining the brass and timpani to rise chromatically until Guillermo recognized the composition from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s death and funeral.

  As the music gained strength, veins erupted beneath the wallpaper, tracing lines from one end of the hall to the other. Fingers wormed through plaster, scrabbling to pry open the seams. With each puncture came a lick of flame and the sound of nefilim’s voices, crying as they sang.

  Movement at the top of the stairs caught Guillermo’s attention. Diago ran onto the landing, but before he could descend, a shot rang out. He slid down three stairs, clutching at the banister and halting his fall. Blood soaked the white of his shirt.

  All around them, the fire escalated with the opera’s violent crescendos, following the horns with a savage roar. Smoke filled the air; it stung Guillermo’s eyes and choked his lungs. He ran toward his friend. Blinded by the haze, he stumbled and fell into a bottomless abyss.

  Before his eyes were fully open, Guillermo rolled into a sitting position. His heart punched his chest with one hard blow after another.

  He fumbled for the pad and pencil he kept beside his bed and jotted down quick notes: banner, eagle with a lyre, three fleurs-de-lis, gold field, hall
tree/angels, Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s death, nefilim’s souls, crying, fire, crying, Diago shot, abyss. He sketched the scene in stark lines without much detail.

  Three knocks echoed through his house, startling him so badly he almost dropped the pencil. As his heart settled in his chest, he realized someone was at his door.

  With dreams like these, he tended to linger on the verge of slumber in order to cement the imagery in his brain. No time for that today. Reaching for his robe, he glanced at the bedside clock, which showed six thirty. Outside the window, the sky was dirty and gray with dawn. Still too dark to see without a torch, but not for long.

  Juanita stirred beneath the sheets, her body caught between her angelic and mortal forms, ethereal as the night caught between the sun and the moon. In the early days of their arranged marriage, the sight of her in such disarray had unnerved him: her four-fingered hands, the crackling energy around her wings, the mysterious orbs that were her eyes. As the decades had passed, their relationship gradually shifted from mutual respect to love. She easily could have returned to her celestial home after Ysabel’s birth. Instead, she had chosen to remain at his side, and not an hour passed that he didn’t find himself glad. Especially on days like this, the ones that began with nightmares and predawn visitors.

  “What’s happening?” she mumbled as she reached for him.

  He caught her hand in his and brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Go back to sleep. I’ll go see.”

  She vocalized a soft chord in her native language and then stretched as her mortal form solidified around her. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Of course she would. Like him, she knew visitors this early usually meant trouble. He tied his robe’s sash and left their room, pausing briefly beside Ysabel’s door. His daughter lay curled on her bed, hugging her favorite stuffed horse. Assured that the two people most precious to him were safe, he went downstairs.

  At the front window, he glanced outside. Father Bernardo stood on the porch. Hairy as a black bear and almost as ugly, Bernardo posed as Santuari’s priest. He raised his hand to knock again.