“So you had more contact with him than you’ve told me.”
“I’ve never told anyone how much time I spent with Conrad, not even my mother. It was a condition of our relationship.”
“But now?”
“Now,” he said, “you’re here, and it’s time.”
The path before them, which had steadily risen in a gentle slope, now rose more steeply. At the same time, the rock formations, already feet above head height, rose up precipitously, their tops lost in the gloom that arched over them. Soon after, the rock-strewn path bent sharply to the right. Abruptly, it debouched onto a colossal high plateau.
Bravo aimed the beam from his flashlight at a massive block of shadow hulking at the center of the open space.
“Ayla,” he said, taking her hand, leading her forward, “meet Phaedos, one of the Four Sphinxes of Dawn.”
*
“DID YOUR mother ever tell you about Gideon?” Bravo asked her.
Ayla shook her head. She was staring upward at Phaedos’s majestic, terrifying head. The eyes seemed to bore into her as if it were alive, waiting to be awakened from its ages-long slumber. She trembled a little in its presence.
“My guess is she didn’t even mention his name.”
“She didn’t.” Ayla felt herself to be in a kind of semi-trance. She felt as she had in the convent church outside Rome last year when everything she preferred not to remember happened as if in a nightmare. Had she fallen back into that time, that state? It seemed so to her.
“But you have heard of the Nephilim.”
“I was brought up Muslim, remember. I never took courses in comparative religion.”
“Right,” Bravo said. “Well, according to the Catholic Church, the Nephilim are the spawn of human females and members of the Legion of the Fallen.”
“What an education I’m getting from you.” She frowned. “But I’m not quite understanding—”
“Angels are without genitals. In order to experience sex they would need to—”
“Ah, yes. I see. But what has this to do with the current situation?”
“Everything.” Bravo was turning the bronze rood over and over. “Gideon was Conrad’s father. Gideon’s father was one of the Fallen.”
Ayla’s head turned to him so quickly he could hear the crack of her vertebrae. “What? What did you say?”
“Gideon—my great-grandfather, your grandfather—was Nephilim.”
“Which explains our own powers.”
“Partly, yes.”
She frowned. “Only partly?”
Bravo laughed softly, but it was an odd kind of laugh, tinged with an emotion Ayla could not quite identify. “Gideon’s wife, Diantha Safita, was something else altogether. She more than balanced Gideon out.”
“She didn’t go by the family name Shaw?”
“No. She kept her own name, just as she kept her own counsel. She only confided in the one child who lived, Conrad.”
Ayla looked aghast. “There were others?”
“Her first two children were born dead. Gideon was shaken to his core, but she remained stoic. Only she understood why this had happened. The two dead babies were female.”
Ayla shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“The Nephilim are cursed,” Bravo said. “I think that’s what Conrad meant when he told me he had sinned. It wasn’t his sin—it was his father’s. In any event, daughters of the Nephilim are doomed to death before life. Only the males have a chance at survival, and then the result is far from certain.”
“So Conrad might also have been born dead.”
“No. There was no chance of that. Diantha saw to it.”
“You said there was something different about her.”
“Yes, but I don’t really know much. She was of Phoenician ancestry. That was why she kept her family name, Safita, which infuriated Gideon. But then many things infuriated him.” The rood kept turning, turning as if it were marking the peculiar time here.
“Over the years I did some digging on my own. The Safita lineage is a long and illustrious one. They were kings, and sometimes queens, great generals and admirals of the vaunted fleet in ancient Phoenicia. All of them were sorcerers, who wove their spells to win battles, to tame the violent seas, to build temples of exquisite craftsmanship, protected by magic. But before any of those accomplishments they created a language which formed the basis of many modern-day languages.”
“How would sorcerers create language?”
He smiled. “No idea, but that’s what the texts claim.”
“The texts could be wrong. They sometimes are.”
He nodded. “True enough. But in this case I don’t think they are. It was because of Diantha that Conrad was born and lived.”
“You know this how?”
“I read it in the Nihilus. I told you the manuscript contained page after page of occult formulae. There was a section on the Phoenician sorcerers because an entire cadre of them were hired by King Solomon to join his alchemists. In fact, these were the sixty-six sorcerers who stayed on after he died to do his son’s bidding.”
“Didn’t you tell me that the Phoenicians designed and built Solomon’s temples?”
“Correct. The architects’ workers built the temple, but it was designed by the sorcerers.” He gestured. “These were the same people who conjured the Four Sphinxes.”
Ayla licked her lips. “Does this mean that Diantha was a sorcerer, too?”
“It’s my firm belief, yes.”
“Wow. But if that’s the case why would she marry Gideon? Surely she’d know—”
“There were many layers to my great-grandfather. On the surface he was handsome, decisive, powerful, charismatic. Those traits are enough to seduce even the strongest of women.”
“But couldn’t Diantha’s power allow her to see beneath the surface?”
“You’re missing the point—which is Gideon’s power. It took a long time for Diantha to uncover the creature he really was. She had to go at it carefully, peeling away layer after layer without him knowing what she was doing. Besides, by that time, Conrad had been born, and her first priority was to keep him safe from his father’s psychic predations.”
“Which, being a Nephilim, must have been prodigious.”
Bravo nodded. “Precisely. The Nihilus covers the Nephilim. A protocol is described for ensuring a male child will be born alive. It involves two incantations. The first severs the umbilical cord while the baby is still in the womb.”
“But wouldn’t the baby die?”
“Under normal circumstances, he would; the baby would be without his mother’s nourishment. But this is as far from normal as you can get. The incantic severing must take place in the exact middle of the ninth month. From that time until his birth the baby is nourished by a second incantation—by magic, in other words. And when he’s born, he has no navel.”
“And Conrad?”
“He showed me where his navel would have been. It was as smooth and undimpled as your cheek.”
*
THERE WAS so much more Bravo could have told Ayla, so much more he wanted to tell her. But he could see that she was still processing what he had already revealed. It was a lot for anyone to chew over. For now he decided that he had told her enough.
After some time, he said, “Would you like to meet Phaedos?”
“Ha! Sure.” Then she looked at him uncertainly. “You’re kidding, right? That thing is made out of tons of basalt.”
“And yet you felt his eyes on you, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but surely it’s an optical illusion. Some trick of the light.”
“Okay,” Bravo said. “Let’s find out.”
27
Lalibela, Ethiopia: 1918
WHAT HIS MOTHER HAD PUT INTO CONRAD’S HAND WAS A golden apple. It shone like the sun. The darker the tunnel down which he ran the brighter the apple shone. It was small, no larger than a living lady apple. Whether it was made of gold, some other metal
, or another substance entirely Conrad couldn’t tell. It was neither cool nor warm to his hand; it was, rather, the temperature of blood.
And there was another aspect to the apple: it seemed to be pulling him along, guiding him, as if it was incomplete, as if it was searching for its other half. He knew he had to be careful. Almost from the moment of his first memory at his mother’s breast he knew how dangerous his father could be. Of course, he didn’t know why until he was ten or so, for him old enough to understand the ramifications of his curious and occult lineage. And now as he pushed forward down the steepening tunnel he knew that two things had happened: Gideon was at the height of his power, and he was at his most dangerous. In the best of times, Gideon was prone to a hair-trigger temper. This was now the worst of times. He was not sure even his mother knew the extent of the evil Gideon might be capable of.
The apple was shuddering so badly in his palm that he had to close his fingers tightly over it in order to keep it from leaping out of his hand. He ran now with his torso leaning forward, as if he were being pulled along by a hunting dog straining on its leash.
And then, all at once, he saw what the golden apple of the sun had sensed. Gideon stood ahead of him, smiling slightly, as if he was expecting his son, as if this confrontation was one he had been seeking ever since Conrad’s birth.
And, confirming Conrad’s surmise, he smiled and said, “At last, here we are together, you as a grown man, me at the height of my power. I have been waiting because I knew your mother would send you. She is too much of a coward to confront me herself.”
His smile broadened. “Myths and legends all foretell the death of the patriarch by his son, who goes on to surpass him. That is not going to happen here. Make a move against me and I will cut you down like a logger with his saw. What I am to do will be done. It’s destiny. Nothing can stop it, least of all you.”
Then his smile dissolved into a frown. “What is that in your hand? Where did you get it? I’ve been looking for it for—”
That was when the golden apple flew out of Conrad’s grip, sped in a blur toward Gideon. In reflex, Gideon held up the gold rood, the weapon he believed would ward off any attack by his son or his wife. Instead, the apple seemed to open up its core, or maybe shimmer into semi-insubstantiality. Either way, it surrounded the crucifix, engulfing its center. Gideon cried out, dropping it as heat welts ballooned on his palm and the insides of his fingers where he had held the rood.
It fell to the ground and, seeing his chance, Conrad dived for it. At almost the same time, Gideon strode forward and, as Conrad left his feet, he grabbed him by his hair, jerked hard, pulling Conrad’s head up, exposing his neck.
A knife was in Gideon’s hand, its long, wickedly curved blade glistening with a poison known only to the Nephilim. In the blink of an eye, the blade sliced across Conrad’s neck.
Blood spurted like a fountain.
28
Paris / Hollow Lands: Present Day
HIGHSTREET WAS DREAMING OF CHRISTMAS. IT WAS SNOWing outside, a gentle dusting adding itself to the inch or two that had overspread London’s Cadogan Place during the frosty night. The tree had been decorated for weeks, and the anticipation of opening the gifts had become so unbearable that he, as his seven-year-old self, had awakened close to four-thirty in the morning and, dragging his beloved coverlet behind him, had padded down the hall to sit halfway down the steep staircase, waiting for dawn to tiptoe its way through the starched lace curtains of the east-facing drawing room.
A curious thing, though. As the shadows of the furniture became outlines, as the twinkling of the tree lights dimmed in response to the watery light of Christmas Day, he smelled smoke.
His seven-year-old self sniffed more deeply, then stood, descending one step at a time, the smell of smoke becoming stronger all the while. Then, as his bare feet reached the first floor, the old wooden floorboards, the gemstone Persian carpets vanished.
With a crash he fell out of his bed in Paris, his eyes, all his senses, popping open at the same time. His dream had evaporated—all except the smoke smell, which was now even stronger. His bedroom was strangely hot. Automatically, he looked to his bedside digital clock: 2:37 a.m.
And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the first flicker of flame. At the same time, a cloud of acrid smoke rolled into the room. He was already down on his hands and knees, which was a blessing; the air was at least partially breathable. But still the back of his throat felt raw and his eyes were tearing. Heat baked his back as he scrambled across the floor to get to the bathroom. He’d read that placing a wet washcloth over your nose and mouth could save your life in such situations.
He was halfway to the bathroom when he was racked by coughs, and the more he coughed the more he sucked in the smoky air. Within seconds he grew dizzy, his eyesight dimmed at the edges. He was like a blind man crawling through a swirl of deathly fog.
He was almost at the doorsill to the bathroom when he faltered. His cheek dropped to the floorboards. All forward motion ceased; all the strength in his limbs seemed to have leached out of him. All seemed lost and, because he was not someone familiar with panic, he resigned himself to death. “I’m done, for sure,” he murmured under his breath. And strangely, his mind was filled with Tilda, she of the flat chest, the colt’s legs, the large china-blue eyes, and the flashing smile. He hadn’t thought of her in years but now felt strangely close to her, as if she were here and all he wanted was to lie down beside her and hash out new methods of electronic hacking.
Then rough hands, large and powerful, were wrapping a wet cloth over the lower half of his face, lifting him up. He heard a man’s voice calling. The fire department had arrived, just in the nick of time, though he had no memory of having called them. A neighbor, then, bless ’em! He vomited, from a combination of the smoke and the relief, almost choked on it because of the cloth. But someone ripped it away from his face, wiped his mouth with the wet cloth, all the while moving him away from the flames.
Near to passing out, he felt himself settling onto a powerful shoulder, being carried in a fireman’s lift through the fire -and smoke-ridden rooms of his flat, out into the hallway. He lost consciousness again, afterward could not remember the descent down the flights of stairs, or coming out onto rue des Archives.
He awoke to find himself sprawled on one-half of the plush backseat of a large automobile. Someone big and muscular was behind the wheel—the fireman who carried him down and out? But he’d no idea the Parisian fire department had such posh vehicles. They were traveling at speed, but it felt as if they were gliding over velvet tracks. Not even a single ripple of the street made itself known in the vehicle’s interior.
He reeked of smoke; his throat ached; the roof of his mouth felt flayed. His mind, still not working properly, flew back to reading about Lawrence of Arabia, with whom he strongly identified, staggering out of the desert. Then he realized that he was still in his pajamas, an English affectation of his childhood he never grew out of, and which had probably kept his flesh from being scorched. It was the fabric that was scorched, here and there, as if his beloved nanny had misused the iron, and he thought, Poor Pearl, she’s going to catch it from Mum now.
“Hugh!”
Someone calling his name snapped him back to his present circumstances, from which his mind had been fleeing ever since he awoke with a start from his dream.
“Hugh.”
“Yes.” He croaked like a raven.
“Here. Drink this.”
A thermos was thrust into his hands, and he gratefully drank the cool Earl Grey tea, which at that moment tasted like the nectar of the gods. He closed his eyes, true relief flooding through him. He was alive, the fire was behind him, whatever was lost in his flat was insured and replaceable, or he’d buy new items; it hardly mattered to him. His world, so abruptly turned upside down, had righted itself.
“Slowly, slowly,” the same voice said. “Drink too fast and it will all come right back up again.”
&nb
sp; And speaking of that voice, now that he thought about it, it sounded awfully familiar. A tremor of recognition worked its way down his spine.
“Hugh, are you yourself again?” the voice asked.
“Better.” He licked his cracked lips, handed the empty thermos back into the hand that had offered it to him. It was a small hand, with fingers pudgy as sausages. He knew those hands. And now one of them pressed a small soft plastic bottle into his.
“Use these eye drops. Your eyes must be stinging.”
That they were. Grateful again, Highstreet squeezed two or three drops into each eye, feeling the slippery solution bathing his eyeballs, soothing them. When he could see clearly, he turned to his benefactor and, damn it all to Hell, if it wasn’t that slimy fucker Obarton.
Trust Lilith, Highstreet thought, already regaining a semblance of his old self; she had planted the electronic bugs on Obarton with great precision. The resulting video was as damning as any evidence could be. If he thinks the heroics of his men are going to make me grateful enough to hand over the video gratis he has another thing coming. A slow smile spread across his face, knowing that he was still in the driver’s seat, so to speak.
“Thank you, Obarton,” he said, carefully avoiding using the phrase “owe you” in any way, shape, or form. “It was lucky you were in the area.”
“Hmm, yes,” Obarton mused. “But, you see, it wasn’t luck at all, dear boy. It was all meticulously planned.”
Highstreet pulled his torso upright, struggling to understand. “Pardon?”
Obarton sighed, as if offering this explanation was taking too much out of him. “The fire, the rescue, you here with me. It was all planned, Hugh.”
“What?” Highstreet goggled. “For the love of God, why?”
“Why?” Obarton folded his hands across his too-ample stomach, as he was wont to do, stared up at the upholstered ceiling of the car. “Well, now, let me count the ways. The fire was set to ensure the destruction of any copies of the video you may have secreted around your flat. No time to search, you see. If I killed you outright, the video would find its way into the public domain, would it not?”
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