by T. Frohock
Diago edged ahead of Guillermo and chose a deserted corridor that appeared to go upward. Guillermo followed.
At the first empty office, he slid inside, with Guillermo on his heels. A lab coat hung on a rack by the door. Medical books with German titles lined the shelves and rested beside a stack of files on the metal desk.
Closing the door, he quickly removed the makeshift map Martinez had drawn and filled in the corridors they’d just traversed.
“What are you doing?” Guillermo whispered.
“This place is a labyrinth. We need to keep track of where we go.”
Guillermo went to the files. “All German names.”
“Martinez said the Germans controlled the choruses.”
They exchanged a glance.
“You’re the medic.” Guillermo returned to the door. “See what you can find out. I’ll keep watch.”
Diago pocketed his map and went to the desk. He opened the first file: jannik krause. Age eighteen. Second-born life. Singer. deceased.
A black-and-white photograph was stapled to the top right-hand corner of the page. The picture showed a healthy youth with a pugilist’s face and fair hair, light eyes.
Flipping to the next file, Diago merely glanced at the name. Another singer, also deceased, age sixteen, firstborn life. This boy thinner, with a piercing gaze.
“Fourteen,” he muttered the next boy’s age. The same as my Rafael. “Firstborn life.” He’d actually smiled for his photograph.
Diago went to the next one, and the next: fifteen, seventeen, twenty-one . . . third-born, firstborn, firstborn . . . all dead. He switched his attention to another set of files. These showed an even grimmer picture. Twelve boys, all exhibiting signs of psychoses. “Jesus . . . they report heart attacks, hallucinations, sleep disturbances, five of them have gone insane.”
Guillermo’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What’s the link?”
“Aside from their ages? Nothing. They’re all from different choral groups.” He thought back to all the crates in the warehouse. “Unless it’s the Pervitin.”
“Possibly.” Guillermo reached in his pocket and flicked his lighter’s lid. “That transmission we picked up in the guard shack . . . wasn’t there something about a melee in a choral room?”
“Choral Room Two,” Diago muttered as he continued to read.
“Why would there be a melee in a choral group?”
Diago lifted his head. It was a good question; one that the files failed to answer.
Outside, the klaxons continued to blare.
Dawn
la arentitis
(sanditis)
6
Shivering in the cold damp air, Miquel squatted in the center of the room and hugged his shins. Bricks studded the cell’s floor, jutting upward in the concrete to create a labyrinth of obstacles designed to impede free movement. Walking required great care lest he twist an ankle or knee.
Angelic glyphs writhed on the walls and provided the only light. The razored sigils were rendered in sharp, high notes, each designed to slash his tongue and mouth should he sing a glyph of his own. Already his lips were scabbed from his first test of the wards’ power.
In his last clear memory, he saw himself walking through the French internment camp on the beach of Argelès-sur-Mer. He’d passed the hovel belonging to a mortal who occupied the long monotonous hours by packing and repacking his two suitcases while muttering his wife’s and daughters’ names like a prayer.
Héctor was his name. Héctor-something from Málaga, he was an accountant for a union and had fled up the coast, staying just ahead of the rebels with each move. The gendarmes had taken his wife and daughters to a different camp and he claimed that only through assiduous packing would the French allow him to join them.
Miquel recalled pausing beside the tent. Héctor looked up and smiled. His lips moved, and he said in French: El bête angélique. And then Miquel’s world had gone black.
The angelic beast? What could that possibly mean? And what possessed Héctor to suddenly speak French? Miquel couldn’t answer any of those questions. He touched the lump on the back of his head, working his fingers through the dried blood caking his hair. Nor did he know how many days had passed since Argelès. More than one, less than twenty?
Nothing but jumbled images filled in the blanks, a collage of pain and discomfort. He’d awakened on the floorboard of—a van, a lorry? Did it matter?—bound and naked, a black hood over his head.
Fading in and out of consciousness, he’d sensed others on the hard floor with him. Someone had injected him with . . . what? A narcotic of some kind. It flushed his body with heat and dried the spit in his mouth, cramping his stomach and leaving him disoriented.
He touched the needle marks on his arm. Twelve. Twelve shots of the drug.
Frustrated by his inability to summon the details of his capture, he clenched his fists. The impression of his wedding band remained on his finger, but the ring had disappeared. He felt that loss more keenly than the rest. All those years I chided Diago about wearing his, and now I’ve lost mine.
Stolen, not lost.
That was the least of his worries.
Had they returned to Spain? It was possible. Except a return to Spain meant interrogations. Thus far, there’d been no questions.
Because this is simply the first stage. Clenching his jaw, he closed his eyes. He understood the process, having performed it enough times on behalf of Los Nefilim. Isolate the subject. Warp their sense of time and place. Sleep deprivation and disorientation were the goals. Questions would come later.
If they find out who I am . . .
A shudder ran through him on hobbled feet.
Don’t buy trouble. Cramps seized his calf and refused to let go. He stood and limped through the room, careful to place his feet between the bricks. Eight steps from the door to the back wall. Four from side to side. He paced through twice, but on the third circuit, his exhaustion caused him to stumble. The arch of his foot landed on a brick at the wrong angle. His toes scraped the floor. He hissed with pain and returned to squat in the center of the room.
Think. Go back to the beach. Re-create it. Closing his eyes, he imagined the lean-tos the prisoners had constructed from sheet metal and blankets. The French internment camp stretched over a landscape of barbed wire and sand, endless sand. Miquel had searched the other men’s eyes, looking for his nefilim, or any rogues who might have seen them. All he found was hope souring into despair.
Héctor. Go back to Héctor and the beach.
Héctor chanting the names of his loved ones: Magdalena, Ariana, Clara, Magdalena, Ariana, Clara, Magdalena . . . He looked up from his suitcases and focused on Miquel. Then he said, El bête angélique.
There. Miquel stopped the reel of film running in his mind’s eye. Héctor used the masculine article “el.” The correct article for angel was the feminine “la,” so Héctor referred to a male angel. Had the mortal mistaken a nefil for an angel?
Maybe. Miquel reached deeper. He reconstructed the moment. Soft gray light had suffused the waves. The Pyrenees’ icy breath rushed down onto the beach, lifting the sand, pushing it into every crevice of his body, burning his eyes, infecting his pores, crunching between his teeth in the bread he ate.
Ocean waves licked the shore but couldn’t ease his thirst. Only by digging did he find a puddle of dirty water, which tasted of excrement and sand.
He licked parched lips. I am a desert, dry and barren and filled with sand.
Something trickled between his toes. He opened his eyes. The sigils on the walls throbbed like a headache, pulsing in bruised colors, wine-dark like the sea.
Grains of sand bounced merrily between the bricks, as if the earth quaked, but the floor didn’t move. There is no quake. I’m going insane. The refugees even had a name for the psychotic break induced by the camps: la arentitis—sanditis.
Miquel bit his torn lip. Pain shot through him. He tasted blood. The scene remained.
The grains doubled, then tripled, until they coated the floor, rising to cover the soles of his feet. His flesh crumbled and disappeared into the sand.
“This isn’t happening.” His murmur caused the sigils on the walls to churn harder.
Miquel rose as the sand reached his ankles, then his knees. An illusion. It has to be an illusion. But when he reached down to touch his leg, his fingers found no flesh, only sand.
Instinctively, he traced a ward of protection in the air. The first note to charge the glyph barely passed his lips before he caught himself. A sigil peeled from the wall, its bright saw-toothed edges churning as it flew at his face. He ducked. The glyph smashed against the opposite wall, leaving silver sparks in its wake. It skidded to the corner, where it spun and careened back toward him. The blades ripped a gouge from his ear to his chin.
His blood clotted the sand that was now up to his chest. The grains tickled his chin and then his lips, rose until they filled his mouth, he twisted his head and tried to spit, but his lips were gone, and then his tongue, and he couldn’t scream . . .
The cell door slammed open.
The sand disappeared.
Miquel blinked at the floor, empty now save for the zigzag pattern of bricks. His legs were whole. Blood wetted his chin. He touched his cheek where the sigil had torn him. What the hell?
He absently rubbed the needle marks on his arm as he looked toward the open door. Two burly nefilim in Nationalist colors flanked a smaller nefil, who wore a lab coat over his Italian uniform. He was roughly Diago’s size, with black hair and the same dark-lashed eyes. But where Diago’s irises were green, this nefil had gray eyes with pale hints of blue.
Miquel’s heart kicked in his chest. Nico Bianchi. Jordi Abelló’s lover. And if Nico was here, Jordi couldn’t be far behind.
Goose bumps erupted over Miquel’s flesh. I’m dead. It’s just a matter of when. He thought of Diago and Rafael—their faces as they’d said their goodbyes. We knew this day might come. Still, he felt cheated. We didn’t have enough time together in this incarnation.
He swiped his palm over his torn cheek. Pain extinguished the self-pity. Focus. Focus or I’m lost for certain. He had to devise a way to commit suicide before they pried Los Nefilim’s secrets from him. A way and the will to do it.
His first thought was to rush the group, but he didn’t give the plan room to grow. They wouldn’t murder a valuable source so wantonly. Although both guards were armed, neither of them held their weapons, which meant they’d subdue him with sigils, or their fists, and then monitor him much more closely.
Diago had taught him to watch for the right moment. And this was not it.
As he looked beyond the trio blocking his escape, the spark of live sigils wafted over the door of the cell opposite his. Another captive resided within. Another member of Los Nefilim? If so, who? And how much have they already revealed?
“Your papers identify you as Miquel Fierro,” said Nico. “Is this your name?”
The Italian’s gaze crawled over Miquel’s body—not with the cold disdain of an interrogator appraising a source of information, but the way one man would size up another for his bed.
When Miquel didn’t answer, Nico smiled and asked, “Is my Castilian this bad?” He held up the papers. “Your name?”
“Miquel Fierro.” He found his voice, hating himself for giving the wards a furtive glance as he answered. The sigils didn’t change color again.
“Miquel Fierro, then.” Nico jotted a note on his clipboard, shaking his head as if disappointed in the answer. “I am Dr. Nico Bianchi. You have heard of me?”
Miquel nodded.
“Good. We know you as Miquel de Torrellas.”
Across the hall, something heavy hit the door, rattling it in its frame. Everyone, even the guards, jumped. The sigils glowed white like irons held in the fire. Someone groaned—a low, lonely sound.
No one went to the prisoner’s aid.
Nico’s mouth twitched. He picked at the clipboard with one ragged fingernail. “Bring him,” he snapped before he turned and walked away.
The bigger nefil waited until Nico’s footsteps receded down the hall. He tossed a black canvas hood into the cell. “Put it on.”
Miquel reached down and grabbed it. Grains of sand fell from the folds. Mouth dry, he lifted it over his head, hoping the guards didn’t see his hands shake.
7
Miquel sat on the wooden chair, his wrists cuffed behind him. A gag cut into the fresh wound on his face. The strap across his chest held him against the chair. Not that he intended to move. With the hood on, he had no idea if active sigils, perhaps designed to punish motion, were on the walls. All he could do was remain still while sweat stung the gash left by the sigil from his cell.
One of the guards remained with him. Miquel heard the whisper of fabric as the man shifted position. Somewhere nearby, a low growl rolled like white noise in the background.
A generator? He immediately discounted the idea. The noise was too uneven. It felt more like the restless grinding of stones after an avalanche.
A door opened.
Miquel started, hating himself for jumping. But that’s what they wanted. Uncertainty, fear. Unfortunately, he knew this game all too well. Except instead of being the interrogator, it was his turn to play the source. Nor was it the first time. He knew how much punishment his body could take.
But this was different. Always, in the past, he’d depended on Los Nefilim to watch his back. Interrogations were a matter of holding out until a rescue was orchestrated. There would be no liberation here. No one knew where he was.
Someone stepped into the room. “Leave us.”
Nico again. Interesting.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to—”
“Out.”
The guard left.
As soon as the latch clicked into place, Nico loosened the hood and pulled it off.
Blinking in the sudden brightness, Miquel took in the room. He faced a metal desk and a rolling chair. Cracks and patches of missing plaster ran along the walls, exposing the bricks beneath. Blotches of mold darkened the crumbling stones. No windows. The only light came from the naked bulb overhead.
And no sigils on the walls. At least none that were evident to a nefil’s eye.
Nico set his black doctor’s bag on the desk. He tossed the hood down beside it. Then he removed the gag, gently working the cloth away from the wound on Miquel’s face.
After a quick examination, he retrieved a bottle of alcohol and some gauze from his bag. “We don’t have much time before your interrogator arrives.” He dampened the gauze with alcohol and pressed it against Miquel’s cheek.
The alcohol scalded the open wound. Miquel tried to jerk his face from Nico’s reach.
Nico caught his hair and held him still. He didn’t relax his hold until Miquel ceased to struggle. Gently massaging the back of Miquel’s neck, he leaned close and whispered, “We have three minutes. I have to get out of this place. I need your help. I’m leaving Jordi. Get me to Calais. I want to go to the United States. I need tickets, money, papers. You have a network in place.”
The sentences came hard and sharp, like needles in his ears. Does he think I’ll lead him to members of Los Nefilim for false papers and a boat to America? “I can’t . . .”
“Sam has gone to Barcelona—”
“Who?”
“The Grigori. He has gone with the generalissimo to meet with Franco.”
Now he knew Nico was lying. “Grigori?” he scoffed. “The Watchers were banished from the angelic realms. The legends say they corrupted the mortals, and for their sins they were placed in everlasting chains under darkness.”
“And what is more everlasting than the darkness beneath the mountains?” Nico replied.
Beneath the mountains. They were in the Pyrenees, probably on the Spanish side and close to Barcelona if Jordi and the alleged Grigori were traveling back and forth.
Nico interrupted Miquel’s rampan
t thoughts. “Jordi found the Grigori’s prison and freed one.”
The certainty in his voice sent chills cascading across Miquel’s flesh. If this was true, then the implications were staggering. Suddenly suicide was out of the question. I’ve got to get out of here and warn the Inner Guard.
Miquel stalled, hoping Nico would inadvertently slip him more information. “What business would a Grigori have in Barcelona?”
“The generalissimo and Sam are helping Franco coordinate the new government.”
Twice now, he’d referred to Franco and the generalissimo as two separate entities. The fact that Nico considered Jordi the generalissimo told Miquel volumes about how the other nefil saw the world.
The mortals were nothing to them. Franco was simply a prop that Jordi would destroy when his usefulness ran out, and apparently Nico saw nothing wrong with that. Because they’re the same, and Jordi is probably behind Nico’s ruse.
Nico checked the gash. “Will you help me?”
If he made an oath to Nico, he was bound by it. “If I say no?”
Nico glanced at the door as he returned the alcohol to the bag. A thin sheen of sweat covered his brow. “Do you really need to think about this, Miquel?”
Miquel shook his head. “This is—”
Nico gestured for him to lower his voice.
“—too easy. You’re playing me. What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Help me and I will get you out of here. You, in turn, will get me across the Atlantic and to freedom.”
Miquel licked his lips.
“We have one minute.”
And what have I got to lose? Miquel’s heart ached at the thought of his husband and son so far away. With their home destroyed, they were forced into a retreat no one wanted. Hadn’t they lost enough?
The temptation to say yes was intense. But Miquel wasn’t fooled. Instead of sending an interrogator to beat the information out of him, they’d sent Nico to play on his empathy for others, thinking Miquel would take him to safety. Leading them and the Grigori straight to the heart of Los Nefilim. He shook his head. “I can’t.”
