by T. Frohock
Nico allowed himself to dream. He’d even be glad to see Miquel right now. And I’ll tell him I’m sorry, and he’ll know I mean it. This time, he will know I mean it—he’ll see it in my hand and my back and my eyes.
Then the reality of his situation settled around him again. There wouldn’t be a last-minute rescue, and escape was impossible at this point. While Nico still might sing his way to survival at some point, Fresnes was not the place. Too many obstacles lay between him and freedom. The starvation and torture had taken a toll; he was physically too weak to control the mortals’ minds for a sustained period. He needed to bide his time.
Let them think I’m beaten. If the opportunity came to escape, he needed the element of surprise. He shuffled between his guards like an old man. For once, he didn’t have to work very hard to fake a restrained pace.
They continued down the corridor, pausing at each gate. Odd. They weren’t moving in the direction of the upper cells. It seemed they were leaving the prison.
Nico’s anxiety crept upward with each step, his previous optimism long forgotten. What now? Firing squad?
He didn’t expect the pretense of a trial, but knowing the Germans, he’d anticipated some formality—a paper, an officious mortal with dead eyes to pronounce judgment, something. Still, they were definitely leaving the building. He was almost relieved.
Diago promised to watch for him. If they send you into your next incarnation, know that I will watch for you, as a comrade.
Not as a friend. Not yet. But as a comrade. Nico wondered what it would be like to have someone who cared enough to watch for him—to have close friendships like the nefilim in Guillermo’s division.
Maybe in our next incarnation, we can begin as friends. In his next incarnation, he wouldn’t be seduced by Jordi’s sweet lies. He’d know who his real friends were.
The guards took him to the train yard.
They’re sending me to the camps. He should have been relieved it wasn’t the firing squad. He wasn’t. He’d been privy to Los Nefilim’s intelligence on the subject of the concentration camps.
The mortals had even sent people into Auschwitz to report on the conditions and possibly organize an escape. A Polish resistance fighter allowed himself to be arrested and what he found was so horrific, his first message from the camp was simple: Bomb Auschwitz.
Nico gritted his teeth and consoled himself. I’ve been given another day. Use it. He surreptitiously glanced at the others, trying to formulate some type of plan.
Prisoners stood in lines and faced the tracks. Jews, Roma and Sinti, resistance fighters, and the poor souls who had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, were organized into groups.
The Jews were identifiable by the yellow stars they wore and were kept separate from the others. As much as he pitied those interned simply for their race, he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself by defending them. He had his own secrets to keep.
If the Germans find I’m homosexual, my fate will be no better. So far, his captors didn’t know. Nico intended to keep it that way.
His guards maneuvered him toward a diverse group of men. They shoved him between two mortals at the back of the line and left him there.
The prisoners around him appeared as beaten and ragged as him. He didn’t recognize either of the mortals flanking him, but that meant nothing. Fresnes was huge and overcrowded. They might have been in adjoining cells at some point over the last few months and not known it.
The men didn’t speak. They didn’t dare.
The yard crawled with both French and German soldiers that guarded the lanes between the tracks and the buildings. Nico immediately discounted an escape attempt.
The doors of the cattle car nearest Nico’s group opened to reveal dozens of men already inside. They didn’t leave the car. Instead, the guards herded Nico’s group toward the open door.
As they neared the car’s dim maw, the lines broke and turned into a seething mass of bodies. Nico felt himself swept forward.
He scrambled inside and managed to work his way beneath a window opposite the door. A cold breeze touched his upturned face. He put his back against the wall and held his spot as more bodies were crammed around him. The car was filled until no one could sit. They stood together packed tight.
The doors slammed shut.
In the dimness, they waited. Someone coughed.
The man beside Nico murmured, “Do you know where they’re taking—?”
Nico shook his head.
The man fell silent.
It was hours before the train finally moved. By the time it did, four men had already died, propped up by the living bodies around them.
The train’s floor rattled beneath their feet. Nico wasn’t tall enough to see through the window, but the cold breeze mitigated the smell of so many bodies pressed together. They’d been given buckets for their waste, but no chance to empty them, let alone room to use them properly. His cell at Fresnes had begun to look like a luxury suite.
Nico lost all track of time. Eventually the train braked for another stop, but this one felt different somehow.
Instinctively, he looked up. Flurries of snow drifted through the window.
The engine hissed. Someone on the other side of the car muttered to the man beside him. The comment was murmured from ear to ear in tones of fear: Guards with attack dogs.
A shudder of anxiety ran the through the men.
Nico straightened. “Can you see where we are?”
The mortal in front of him whispered the message back to the man by the doors.
Nico didn’t have to wait long for the reply.
“Mauthausen.”
Mauthausen. Jesus. Extermination through labor.
The doors suddenly opened. A blast of frigid air blew into the car.
Guards shouted: “Dalli, Dalli!”
No one needed an interpretation. All the prisoners knew enough German to understand they were to move and move fast. The men spilled through the doorway to land on the frozen ground. Guards with truncheons speeded them along with blows.
Nico stepped over a mortal. Whether the man was dead or unconscious, he had no way to know and no time to find out.
The guards took vicious glee in the confusion, shoving the prisoners to the side of a road. Nico narrowly missed taking a club to his face. He bobbed right and landed hard, skidding on the loose gravel. Regaining his balance, he got his feet under him and ducked into the writhing mass of men.
The doors to the Jewish cars weren’t opened. The passengers inside jostled and pressed their faces to the few barred windows. They begged for water. They were ignored.
Soldiers, aided by snarling Alsatians, forced Nico’s group farther from the train. A hard hand grasped his arm and jerked him into place.
Nico barely resisted lashing out. The German was young, barely nineteen. He screamed in Nico’s face ordering him to remain still.
Instinctively, Nico knew what to do. He lowered his gaze in submission and bowed his head. Grit your teeth and pretend it’s Jordi.
He managed to present the soldier with enough submissiveness to avoid further abuse. He held himself still until the mortal shifted his attention to the next man. Then he wiped the German’s spit from his face.
The prisoner beside him coughed, a wet, racking sound that lurched up from his lungs. Nico didn’t need a stethoscope to diagnose the condition. Pneumonia. He won’t live a day in this place.
Somehow, they all remained standing as the Germans counted them. And counted. And counted again.
Nico grew numb from the cold. The sound of the soldiers’ voices faded and the world suddenly turned surreal, as if he lived through a dream.
The man beside him collapsed. Before Nico could assist him, the young Nazi returned and shot the man in the back of the head.
Shifting his gaze forward, Nico felt the small thread of anger return to his chest. His rage brought the world back in stark relief.
Now he un
derstood Miquel’s fury. I’m going to survive this. I’m going to survive just to make these bastards pay. His teeth chattered from the cold. Hate kept him on his feet.
After a fourth count, the train belched a thick cloud of steam and crept away from the station, as if ashamed of its purpose. The passengers’ cries became a memory carried by the wind.
Snow fell from somber clouds. Nico thought again of the SS-Obergruppenführer’s frigid eyes.
Suddenly the guards began shouting. “Move! Move!”
The prisoners were forced to run. Nico made sure to mimic the mortals’ shambling, stumbling gaits, careful not to go too quick—so they wouldn’t realize he wasn’t mortal—nor too sluggish—so he wouldn’t be beaten. Given his hunger and exhaustion, parodying the mortals wasn’t difficult.
The dogs snarled and snapped at the prisoners’ ankles. In stark comparison to the strange centipede of men clambering through their streets, the villagers went about their daily business as if nothing unusual transpired. They studiously avoided making eye contact with the prisoners.
Nico tried to catch even one person’s eye and failed. How can they pretend this is normal unless they see it every day?
As the group of men reached the edge of the town, a cluster of children threw rocks at them. “They’ll work you to your bones, then up the chimney you’ll go!”
Nico glared at a boy. The child looked away. He didn’t leave the group, but he threw no more stones.
At least they can feel shame. Nico turned his attention back to the road. He had to be careful not to fall. Anyone that did was shot. Nico counted six deaths before he stopped counting.
Soon enough it was all he could do to keep running.
The Mauthausen camp loomed in the distance, growing closer with every step. The bracketed rooflines flanking the stone gates conjured images of pagodas.
If pagodas were surrounded with skeletons. Nico’s eyes narrowed. Men with swollen ankles and sunken cheeks paused in their work. They weren’t some daimonic nightmare but actual mortals starved to the brink of death. A few called out questions, but their voices faded before he caught their words.
He barely had time to acknowledge their presence before his group was driven through the gate. They were herded into an area between the showers and the fortress wall, where they finally halted. Once more, the Germans forced them into lines.
Four men in striped clothing entered the area and began to count them. Kapos. Nico had heard about them, too. He noted the green or black triangles on their uniforms. Criminals, but they all seem to be German.
Another man passed in front of the shower room’s door and spoke to someone in Spanish. The answer came back—also in Spanish.
And where there are Spanish mortals, there might be Spanish nefilim. Either way, he’d find safety in numbers. Hope once more touched his heart with a delicate finger.
Suddenly the men around him began undressing. One of the kapos rapped his truncheon against his palm.
Something happened, some order was given, and he’d missed it. He immediately began to strip. The kapo’s eyes shifted to another.
He barely finished when someone shouted, “Achtung!”
The kapos removed their hats and snapped to attention.
Two officers walked toward the group of prisoners. Nico recognized them from photographs he’d seen during a meeting with Guillermo’s staff.
The first officer, SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Eisenhöfer, was in charge the expropriation of the prisoners’ belongings. According to Guillermo’s sources, Eisenhöfer inspected incoming prisoners to get first pick of any valuables.
He’s out of luck with this group. Anything of value that Nico had possessed disappeared after his internment in Fresnes. He assumed the rest of the men in his group were as poor.
Nonetheless, Eisenhöfer strode before the prisoners, examining the belongings at their feet. He took his time.
Nico turned his attention to the second man. His rank was lower, but that made him no less dangerous. Anton Streitwieser, Third Schutzhaftlagerführer. He was tasked with maintaining order in the routine running of the camp. An Alsatian with a savage grin sat at his feet.
After a nod from Eisenhöfer, Streitwieser began to speak. He told them the rules of the camp and promised the crematorium’s chimney was their only exit.
Now they all understood the children’s taunts. The prisoner beside Nico began to cry. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he made no sound.
Streitwieser motioned to one of the kapos. The man consulted a clipboard and called out three numbers.
At first nothing happened. Nico could almost hear the men weighing their options. Finally, three prisoners broke the lines to shuffle forward. One of them was the weeping man beside Nico. He was less than five paces away.
“These are the queers transferred from Natzweiler-Struthof,” the kapo announced to Eisenhöfer.
The wind shifted. Heavy black smoke churned from the chimney. Ashes mixed with the snow. The world turned black-and-white. Not even the color of Nico’s song could save him, because his throat swelled shut with fear.
Not my number. They didn’t call my number, because they don’t know. And he damn well intended to keep it that way.
Streitwieser snapped his fingers. “This is what we do to queers in Mauthausen.” The bitch’s hackles rose. A growl rippled across her lips. Streitwieser gestured at the weeping prisoner close to Nico and asked, “Where’s the beggar?”
The prisoners’ confusion over the question was short-lived. The Alsatian leapt at the weeping man. Her jaws snapped at his flesh and broke his bones. His screams echoed between the buildings.
The attack went on for minutes—it went on forever.
With another snap of his fingers, Streitwieser summoned the bitch. She broke off her assault and trotted to him.
Nico looked down at the gore around his feet. The man on the ground wasn’t dead. Not yet, but death wasn’t far.
Beside the dying prisoner, the second man’s eyes were glassy with shock; he stood in his comrade’s gore and yet somehow kept staring straight ahead. The third prisoner shuddered beneath the falling snow, his chattering teeth loud in the sudden quiet.
Eisenhöfer signaled for the kapos to carry on. He walked back to the command area. Streitwieser slipped a piece of meat to the Alsatian and followed.
Next to the showers, a shadow stirred . . . man-shaped, but faceless. In spite of the Waffen-SS uniform, no cries of Achtung! followed him as he peeled away from the wall. He wore a long wool coat trimmed in fur. A whipcord tail lifted the hem and then disappeared as he advanced on the line of naked, shivering men.
Nico frowned. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold suddenly washed over him. Daimon-born.
Los Nefilim had intelligence that indicated the daimon-born were staying close to the camps, feeding on the prisoners’ misery. And now we know those reports are true.
Unlike the neatly shorn guards, the nefil’s dark hair touched his collar. As he stepped into the light, his craggy features became clear: a heavy brow and an aristocratic nose over a well-shaped mouth.
Nico shifted his gaze, hoping the other nefil hadn’t noticed his eyes, but he was too late. The daimon-born nefil assessed him with black eyes that swallowed the light and gave back nothing but shadows.
Nico’s dry throat clicked. Goose pimples wafted over his exposed flesh. He gave up any pretense at subterfuge. One look in those eyes told him the nefil was old. No, Diago is old. This one is ancient.
Ashes continued to flutter from the sky. The other nefil parted his lips; his tongue flickered into the air and then withdrew behind teeth that were long—too long and sharp, so very sharp.
The nefil sang a guttural note that sounded almost like a chant. The kapo turned away; his eyes glazed.
Ignoring everyone but Nico, the daimon-born nefil approached. His gaze roved up and down Nico’s body. “Spanier?”
Spaniard? He wants to know if I’m Spanish. But was
that good or bad? If he told the truth and said he was Italian, then the Spaniards in the shower rooms might overhear. They’ll remember the Italians fought against them during the Spanish Civil War. I’ll lose any advantage I might have to find more nefilim.
Nico nodded. “Jawohl, Spanier.” He glanced at the shower room door and noticed that one of the prisoners watched him carefully. Good. They heard.
The nefil lifted one gloved hand and never lost his smile. “Come.”
Nico looked to the kapos. He begged them with his eyes: Keep me here, keep me with the others, please.
One of the kapos mistook Nico’s plea for confusion and gestured to a translator, who said in Spanish, “He wants you to go with him.”
Nico bent to gather his clothes.
“Leave them.” The daimon-born nefil took off his fine, heavy coat and wrapped it around Nico’s shoulders, surprising both him and the guards.
Guiding him back to the main entrance, the nefil indicated a black car. The chauffer held the door. By his uniform, Nico saw that he was another camp inmate. His eyes indicated that he, like the ancient nefil, was daimon-born.
But he is like me . . . afraid. Nico ducked into the backseat.
The ancient nefil glided in next to him. The chauffer shut the door and took the front seat.
When the car had moved beyond Mauthausen’s gates, the ancient nefil spoke. “I know you speak German. What is your name?”
“Nicolas.” He curled his bare toes against the warmth of the floorboard.
The nefil made the name a question and probed for more information. “Nicolas . . . ?”
Nico hesitated. He couldn’t say Bianchi. Too many dangerous people knew him by that name.
“Ruiseñor,” he blurted. The name meant nightingale in Spanish. At least this way, if his life was lost, Diago might find the alias and know what became of him. “Nicolas Ruiseñor.”
The nefil smiled with his too-long teeth, as if amused. “You may address me as Herr Teufel.”
