by A. L. Mengel
Tramos nodded.
“There were rumors of him being directly connected with the devil. And Delia had drank from it, just like I did.”
“How did you survive?”
Darius smiled. “I didn’t. I lost my gift. And my passion for life. When I was a mortal – for the second time – I saw that I was quickly dying. I aged rapidly.”
“And then what?”
“I died. But after I died, I was given a choice. A decision to follow light or darkness.”
“And what did you decide?”
Darius smiled. “If I had chosen the darkness, I can assure you, I would not be sitting here with you, nor would I have revealed my wings to you. I would not have been able to recreate this tiny little café which you remember so well. There would be no wine. No light. No color.”
“What would there be?”
“There would be nothing.”
Tramos thought of the beach, the bodies, the sea of thrashing limbs. “What about the sea of souls? I saw the thrashing bodies for myself! Did they choose the darkness?”
Darius looked downwards and ran his finger along the rim of his wine glass.
“You were given those visions,” he said. “To prepare you. For your destiny, Tramos. And your destiny is to be with me. To protect.”
Tramos thought of Delia.
He could still see her sitting in her cottage living room.
Darius placed his hand on Tramos’ shoulder. “She has been pursued by Lucifer, the king of the fallen angels. For her entire life.”
“How did it happen for her like that? I know you had a life changing event from drinking from the decanter. You became mortal again. But Delia? Getting visits from the devil when she was a child? Before she drank from the decanter?”
Darius nodded. “For her, it was different. Her gift is somewhat different. She is called to different time periods based on a mission that she is assigned to. So her life is always out of order. And when she was a child in France, she had already experienced periods of being an adult in ancient Jerusalem.”
Tramos shook his head. “I can’t seem to comprehend…”
“You will…in time…but it confuses your mind. It will. It did with me. There is no sense of time or space here. Most humans can’t comprehend that. Even immortals have difficulty. But now, that we exist in the same level, I can explain it to you.”
Tramos waited in the darkness.
He waited for the end to Darius’ tutorial.
For this was not what he had expected about death; he had not imagined that he would be sitting in a bar with someone, who in his life, had been a protégé.
But just so happened to pass before him.
Was Darius an instructor?
A guide?
Had the tables been turned?
*****
Antoine tossed the manuscript towards the fireplace.
The pages flew around the room as several flew into the flames. Delia shot up and started yanking them from the fire. She stamped on the pages. She looked up and over at Antoine, her eyes wide. “What are you doing?! This is our only account of his life when you were gone!”
Antoine sat back on the sofa and scoffed. He looked around the room, examining the drapes. “It’s interesting how you still have curtains on your windows,” he said.
Delia dropped the papers in a pile on the floor and shook her head. “What…are you talking about?”
Antoine got up and went to the window. He leaned his head against the cool glass and listened to the falling rain. He let out an exasperated sigh, and then looked back at Delia. “Did you read the letter?” he asked. “The letter that Sheldon wrote before he died. In the manuscript. Did you read it?”
Delia thought of the manuscript.
And the letter. She’d remembered Darius visiting her on several occasions discussing it. It was a letter to a certain Professor Douglas Khan of Boston College. Written by Sheldon Wilkes, then the Director of The Astral.
If you are reading this, I am dead.
And she remembered when Darius had sat with her, in the very same parlor, next to a fire in the fireplace when he had visited her so many times.
“It’s the letter,” Darius had told her on a similar night so many moons ago. “The first assault on the immortals is detailed in the letter.”
Delia remembered sitting on the sofa, right next to Darius. “And you say that you must report this? Chronicle it? Will it change anything?”
Just after Delia had asked him, Darius had shook his head.
“Perhaps not,” Darius had said. “But I am compelled to report it. And if it helps – in any way – that we have been brutally attacked. Our heart…our well-being…our way of life…just utterly destroyed. At least in this city.”
“And Antoine’s estate?”
“Burned. Along with the club. The offices for The Astral. Our stronghold in Miami.”
“Where are you keeping this manuscript? Will you be publishing it?”
She couldn’t remember how Darius had answered the question. But she knew he had sat, the printed manuscript resting on his legs, watching the fire burn away until it died down.
Delia was jolted back to the present when the phone rang. Antoine was at the wet-bar making himself a cocktail. He looked up and made eye contact with Delia as she answered.
“Monsignor Harrison! Yes?”
Delia sat forward as she listened to the Monsignor.
“We need you back in Rome,” he said. “The council is deliberating and we all need to be present for the ruling.”
Delia looked over at Antoine as the Monsignor hung up from their conversation. She lay the phone down in her lap and sighed. “I know we just got here, Antoine. But we have to get back to Rome.” Antoine walked to the sofa with two, large bulbous glasses of red wine.
“Book us some tickets,” she said. “On the first available flight. We have the manuscript. We’ve done what we came for. We need to get back and finish this.”
“I will, but I am booking us a flight to Frankfurt. I promised Giovanni that I’d take him to Paris for his sight procedure. And I’m going to keep that promise. You can go straight to Rome if you like.”
Delia nodded as Antoine phoned the airlines.
*****
As the first fingerlings of light painted across the Miami sky the next morning, the pink pastels and powder blues reached towards the darkness in the West.
Delia stood on her back deck, overlooking the Bay, towards the lighter skies ahead. Their stay in Miami had been brief, but she knew that she was needed back in Rome.
Antoine managed to book their flights, but they were flying separately. He to Frankfurt, she to Rome. Antoine planned to drive back to Lyon and take Giovanni to Paris for his eye procedure, and then catch the train to Rome. She would fly directly to Leonardo da Vinci and meet with Monsignor Harrison, who had called her again in the wee hours of the morning, to ask for an update on her return, as the High Council had stayed the proceedings for her and Antoine’s return.
Together, they put the stark white dust cloths over the furniture, without speaking. The thunder rumbled overhead as they finished the final preparations for closing up Delia’s cottage, and Antoine carried his small, black suitcase into the small front foyer.
“Your flight takes off an hour after mine,” he said.
Delia nodded as she closed the bedroom doors, joining Antoine at the front door. She raised her eyes and looked up at him. He clutched a bag on his shoulder and looked down at her, sunglasses pushed up on his forehead.
“You know what we are going there to do, right?”
With his hand still on the doorknob, he paused. He turned to face her, his face shifted. “We are heading back to Europe. After only a day in Miami. And then we will face the High Council in Rome. Am I correct?”
Delia nodded slowly. “Yes...” she said. “But we also must address the redemption of our kind, Antoine. And now…that we are taking separate flights on the return….
has me concerned.”
Antoine opened the door and stepped out onto Delia’s small front porch. A light wind blew through the oak canopy. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Delia kept a close eye on Antoine as she watched him load his suitcase into the trunk of his small, silver Mercedes coupe. She turned and locked her cottage, checked the mailbox one last time, and joined him in the car.
The trip to the airport was uneventful, and when they got their tickets, and set to part ways as their flights were in two separate terminals, Delia reached out and grabbed Antoine’s arm. “Meet me in Rome,” she said. “We need you. Don’t forget about me.”
*****
It seemed dreamlike as Delia let go of Antoine’s arm, passed through security, and found her flight to Rome. She could scarcely remember finding her seat, the cabin announcements, take-off or the in-flight service. The next thing she remembered was waking up with a start, her head leaning against the window in her cramped economy class seat, as the captain announced their arrival at Leonardo da Vinci.
There was a pain in her neck.
She reached up and massaged her neck as she stood in line after the plane had stopped at the gate, and again as she dodged scurrying passengers through the expansive terminal, and met the black sedan waiting for her outside of baggage claim. A driver in a back suit popped the trunk and assisted her with her bags as she eased herself into the backseat, leaning back into the dark interior.
The driver closed the door and the outside took on a smoky appearance from the dark window tint. As the car pulled away, she received a message:
THE INSPIRITI. WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU.
She placed her phone down, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. She listened to the rumble of the tires move across the road, and the occasional honking horn.
And as soon as she closed her eyes she saw Tramos.
He was before her, looking down on her, smiling, with his brilliantly white teeth, his long, blonde hair framing his head as it always did.
The wings were not there.
There had been no blood.
But she knew – Delia knew – even in her dream, that she was not experiencing Tramos in the same state of mind that she always had.
Do you feel me Tramos?
Are you looking at me with eyes that do not see? Do you listen to me with ears that do not hear? Are you able to reach out and touch me? Do you feel me?
Do you listen to me?
Delia opened her eyes as the car pulled into La Piazza San Pietro. Despite her other locales around the world, this square felt most like home. She saw the familiar columns reaching around the large, open plaza; the large fountain in the center which looked like a giant mushroom with water cascading from its crown; Maderno’s fountain; built in the center of the plaza. Tourists gathered around it taking photos. And then when she turned her attention towards the doors to the Cathedral, she saw all of them, the High Council, standing motionless in black suits, stern-faced and expressionless, waiting.
For her.
She recognized Monsignor Harrison who walked up just outside her window as the door to the car swung open. The cloud cover had increased the closer the car approached Vatican City, and tiny droplets of rain started to fall. Monsignor Harrison reached around and assisted Delia with her bags as the members of the High Council turned, filing back down a small set of stairs at the side of the Cathedral.
“Why do they go in that way?”
Monsignor Harrison looked over at the High Council members and then over at Delia. “They have special quarters,” he said. “For their stature. Not down in the catacombs with the rest of us.”
“Why were they out here? Waiting for me to return?”
“For the both of you,” he said. “Where’s Antoine?”
Delia sighed. “He flew out an hour earlier than I did. To Frankfurt. He has a car waiting there and is handling Giovanni’s sight procedure.”
Monsignor Harrison shook his head but said nothing.
Delia and the Monsignor walked through the chapel. Delia raised her head, once again, to look up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece, which she had appreciated just days before. “It doesn’t even feel like I left,” she said. “Such a quick turnaround.”
The hallways were the same, dimly lit, with stark, brown walls and black and white linoleum tile on the floors. The activity that had been there previously had ceased. Monsignor Harrison led Delia through the administration hallways, marked with small signs, and she paused, for a moment, on the sign that said “Conference Area”.
And then the Monsignor took her deeper, towards the residential hallways, where the carpet lined the floors. He paused at a door at the end of the hallway and fumbled in his right pocket. “Ah ha!” He produced a set of jingling keys and jiggled the lock open.
His quarters were small and unimpressive.
It appeared like an undersized hotel room, but sparsely furnished, save artwork hanging on the walls. A crucifix hung above the bed, and there was no kitchenette, for all of the members ate in a common dining hall.
“So Antoine’s in Paris.”
She fumbled with her purse, sat on the bed and reached for her phone. “That’s where he was going. Eventually. I haven’t heard from him yet. Let me check my messages.”
The Monsignor sat on the bed next to Delia and looked on as she scrolled through her messages.
She shook her head. “Nothing yet.”
“But he is en route, right? You said he went to Paris to have a procedure?”
Delia tossed her phone in her purse. “It was for their servant Giovanni. Their loyal houseman. To get a new pair of eyes.”
Monsignor Harrison nodded. “Ah, yes. I do remember that. Well then he will be along directly then? I don’t know how much longer I can stall the High Council.”
There was a knock on the door and they both raised their heads to look. Monsignor Harrison sighed and hoisted himself off the bed, pausing at the door. “Yes? Who is it?” he asked.
A muffled voice replied. “We cannot wait any longer. Please locate Antoine and return to the conference chamber.”
*****
They were led back to the conference room, which was filled with immortals. The long, wooden table which lined the opposite side of the room remained empty. Monsignor Harrison was shown to his seat and they sat, waiting for the High Council to appear. He loosened his collar while the Cardinals deliberated in their chambers. Delia sat at the table across from him and looked up at him and smiled. He crossed his legs, and then a few minutes later uncrossed them. He leaned against the table and drummed his fingers against the wood, just as he raised his head and saw the small, wooden door at the opposite end of the room.
The Cardinals filed in, taking their seats at the long, expansive table that stretched the length of the room.
“Your highness,” Monsignor Harrison said. Cardinal Klemmson looked up from his paperwork and raised his eyes at Monsignor Harrison, but did not say a word. He raised his hand.
“I have discussed this with several of the other high ranking immortals,” Monsignor Harrison continued. “We are in agreement that a chosen one needs to represent us. To save our kind from annihilation.”
Cardinal Klemmson leaned forward. “Monsignor Harrison. The immortals have nearly been wiped off the face of the Earth – on your watch, I might add. And now you are suggesting sending a representative – to where?”
“To Heaven.”
The room erupted in chatter.
“To Heaven? Are you mad? Do you even realize what that would require? To send an immortal to Heaven?”
Monsignor Harrison nodded as he looked over and made eye contact with Delia. “It means one of us would have to voluntarily die.”
*****
Antoine exited the terminal in Frankfurt to brilliant sunshine and throngs of passengers exiting cars and buses, carrying suitcases and wheeling small bags. Moments later, his silver Mercedes pulled
up to the curb as the trunk popped open.
Ramiel popped out of the driver’s seat and waved to Antoine and smiled. “Right on time!” Antoine dropped his bag and hugged him. Antoine was about to let go when Ramiel hugged him tighter. His muscular arms wrapped around Antoine, and Antoine returned the embrace. Ramiel’s eyes were closed, he shook his head as a tear streamed down his cheek. After a few moments, their embrace loosened, and Ramiel tossed Antoine’s bags inside and shut the trunk. They slid inside the car and Ramiel navigated the heavy traffic.
After they had made it to the Autobahn, cruising West, Antoine felt Ramiel’s hand on his chin. He looked over at Ramiel, who was alternating between looking at him and watching the road.
“I’d heard about what happened to you in Miami,” he said. “With the Hounds. We thought we had lost you, Antoine! And Delia too.”
Antoine sighed and looked at the other cars pass by. “We did lose Tramos.” They drove through the rolling green hills of western Germany as Antoine leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “It’s all gone,” he said. “Everything. And the estate…guarded.”
“Tramos. I never saw that one coming…”
Antoine opened his eyes and looked over at Ramiel. He noticed his salt and pepper hair was getting longer.
“He died protecting us.” Antoine turned his head and gazed out the window.
“To the chateau, right?”
“Yes. Giovanni is waiting for us there. It took all of my energy to block the thoughts from her about this.”
“Delia is a powerful immortal.”
Antoine nodded. “Yes, I know. And I never told her that Gio already had his procedure before I met her in Rome in the first place. Took a lot of effort to block that out of my mind. If she had known I was planning this, she would do everything in her power to stop me.”
“And you feel you must do this? Journey to the other side?”
Antoine nodded. “I must make amends. This is my day of atonement. It was my sector where it started. Hell, it started with Darius. How did I not know? How did I not know about The Hooded Man? Or his coming assault? I was supposed to be a leader of the sector!”
