Zumthor: I suppose she left the part out about sucking blood from innocent humans.
Subject sits in silence. Stares at agent.
Zumthor: So what did Liza Sole do during her travels? Did she say?
Father Reilly: Liza would hitchhike to large and small cities. She never really acted like she was on the run. Her way of living was deliberate—casual, I guess. Nights spent in bars, libraries, or coffeehouses, looking for people to vibe with. Live music got her blood roiling, with musicians being her weakness. The long hair, the weird hygiene, the tortured personality. They followed her like puppies.
Zumthor: Not quite the upstanding lifestyle these Gloamings like to claim they have. So, why were you at the monastery?
Father Reilly: At the time, I was waiting for Sara Mesley to arrive.
Zumthor: Talk about throwing gasoline on a fire. Why?
Father Reilly: I don’t know. Still don’t. She wanted a meeting. I assumed she was bringing plans for a new mission.
Zumthor: I bet. Okay, so what happened after you bonded with Liza?
Father Reilly: She asked me to leave with her.
Zumthor: Leave with her? Where?
Father Reilly: To her next destination. Obviously she had to keep moving, being the most wanted person—anywhere. There wasn’t much time. She initially wanted to go to the village of Courtils, where there was a farm with a large basement so she could stay until it was time for her next location.
I don’t know why I said yes. I sat there staring at her for such a long time. Who knows if my mind would have changed given days, months, or years? Today I still couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was a chance to see beyond the dogma of my present life. Could faith overcome? Was this the true test I had been waiting for?
Zumthor: So you left?
Father Reilly: If it were only that easy. We had talked for so long that time had drifted from our minds and we were forced to rush in order to beat the sunrise. Liza checked her watch and stood up without a word. She stared at me with a blank expression before a grin broke out and I couldn’t say a word either. My mind was clear. I stood up with her and we walked out the door. This was happening. It was then that I realized the high tide was coming in, and then everything changed…
Zumthor: What happened?
Father Reilly: Then Sara Mesley showed up. We made our way to the outdoor stone stairway that circled the monastery from the outside. The moon was bright and you could see the entire island lit up like a stage. Halfway down I heard a shout from above: “Reilly!” I didn’t want to look but my head shot up and there was Sara staring down at me from the top of the stairs and viewing platform.
I’ll never forget the look on her face.
Zumthor: Anger?
Father Reilly: I wish it were that simple. Betrayal. That was first. Then pain. Then finally anger.
Zumthor: And you left?
Father Reilly: Sara took off like a missile. We all knew she was something to reckon with. The high tide was coming in and the normally walkable sand was taken over by the ocean as we jumped off the island and ran. Neither of us was expecting to be chased by a maniac warrior either.
I couldn’t keep up with Liza but she stayed next to me as the water reached my knees, my waist, my chest. My legs were barely churning. It felt like they were weighted down with lead, and the salt water splashed my face and burned my mouth as I gulped for air. In a moment, the water fell over my head and I dove forward into the ocean with my arms cutting the waves in a half-assed swim.
After about ten feet my arms felt encased in cement, and I was forced to stop and float to catch my breath. Three bullets cut through the water near my head, and I could barely be bothered to move as Liza pulled me into her arms and swam forward.
I turned my head and there was Sara, maybe fifty yards away, churning those arms like there was a gold medal waiting at the finish line. We fell upon the shore, drenched in water and covered by sand, and even Liza had to catch a few breaths before moving on. We ran to a motorcycle Liza had parked—
Zumthor: Of course—a fucking motorcycle. How apropos.
Father Reilly: Fits the image, I’ll admit. We hopped on and went straight to Andorra.
Zumthor: Never heard of it.
Father Reilly: It’s actually—strangely enough—a sovereign city-state near the border of France and Spain. It’s located deep within the mountains. Great natural defenses.
Zumthor: All clear, then.
Father Reilly: Not really. Sara must have stolen a car or something, but she was on us from the get. We ended up at a farmhouse in the mountains.
Zumthor: What then?
Father Reilly: We waited for a week until a freighter arrived to take us to New York City.
Zumthor: New York? Why?
Subject pauses, looks down at his shackled hands.
Father Reilly: To meet with Cian Clery.
Zumthor: Is that a fact?
Subject nods.
Zumthor: Why?
Father Reilly: At the time I did not know.
Zumthor: Did she know him?
Father Reilly: She re-created him.
Agent says nothing. Opens his mouth and closes it.
Subject nods slowly.
Father Reilly: I know. Liza was kind of vague about a lot of the details, although she mentioned that when she was on the run, she felt absolutely drawn to the city of New Orleans. No reason given, but she had to go there no matter the obstacle. In late summer, Liza arrived in New Orleans, staying at a late-eighteen-hundreds Creole town house on Saint Charles Avenue. The house contained an extensive and elaborate basement and was owned by a widowed architect who had retired but kept himself busy with different causes and volunteer work. He was also a fervent supporter of Gloaming rights and extremely discreet. After he completed extensive renovations to the basement, his property had been used frequently to house Gloamings who visited New Orleans during the inception of the virus.
Liza spent her nights cultivating oleanders to prepare for her tea. One night she was clipping leaves from the plant in the bright moonlight when Cian Clery appeared before her with a camel hair backpack slung over his shoulder and dirty clothes hanging off his thin body.
“You brought the locusts,” Liza said with a smile, showing him the pockmarked leaves she was cutting off.
Cian nodded. “I’ll make up for it with this fresh honey I took from a hive in Florida.”
From that point, he stayed. During this time, there were new issues that were affecting Liza’s situation and her ability to move freely. Now, the order would have you believe that Liza was behind the purchase of property in Borgo—the fourteenth rione, or ward, of Rome. Which happened to be the neighborhood closest to the Vatican. The purchases of various buildings in Borgo was traced to a shell corporation assumed to be Gloaming-controlled. As if she wasn’t already number one on their hit list, these events made Liza Sole even more of a target for the order, although it was never proven that she instigated these purchases.
Cian and Liza spent their next few days together, each working to tend the garden at night. No words were said between the two; it was simply assumed that Cian would be re-created. What force of nature could prevent what was always meant to be? I only know what he told me about his re-creation, but he almost did not make it. Liza tends not to proceed with many re-creations because, as the first of this era, she is the most…I don’t know…powerful of us all. Not many people can handle such an infusion and replication of the virus on their bodies.
The process took her a week with Cian and included several periods when Cian would have probably been declared clinically dead had Liza taken him to a hospital. Cian’s memory of the process is fascinating, almost unbelievable. His mind was taken to a room and locked in a tube made of oak, with bodies below him writhing in pain. A series of complex shapes entered his body—maybe re-created DNA—and he could see his life and all the accompanying thoughts in the shape of a catenary traveling along a type of Cartesian co
ordinate system, with a circle radius stopping at each memory, which was a mark in the line, which became a curve as it reached his current point in life. He saw parts of his life that never happened. Would they happen in the future? But he realized what we all comprehended in that moment of which I will not speak because you are not one of us: we are all Anoesis, and yes, everything you believe that entails.
And then he woke up, with a peculiar hunger, and he left…
The door opens and the subject is led away.
Chapter 27
August 21
Thirty-Nine Months After the NOBI Discovery
Sara Mesley
The Order of Bruder Klaus
Wu-Tang’s “Protect Ya Neck” blasted from the bass-heavy speakers of the dingy cab rolling back and forth on the pockmarked dirt road to the village of Listvyanka, near Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia.
The unforgiving harshness of the snow in this region left me craving a cup of hot coffee as I stared at the white shrouds outside the window competing with the darkness for my attention. It only added to my uncertainty as to what I would find outside Lake Baikal.
The driver hit the brakes and I lurched forward. The cab was stopped near an open gate with a cracked padlock hanging from a loose chain. The driver turned in his seat toward me with a peeved look and a point of his gloved finger. “I go no more!” he shouted above the loud music, in Russian-accented broken English.
I looked up and out the windshield and made out the lights from a cabin about three hundred yards up the path. A foot of snow on the ground, two degrees, blizzard conditions…whatever. I’ve done harder things. I threw the cabbie some American dollars, grabbed my bags, and stepped out without a word.
The hike to the cabin was a murderous trek in the dark that mirrored the thoughts running through my head. My legs and arms were burning with my muscles demanding rest or nourishment. But at least the trail was flat—I was trying to focus on the positive. By the time I reached the front door I was in no mood for niceties. I kicked the door, holding a bag in each hand.
The door opened and I was met with the newly long-bearded face of Bernard Kieslowki. Never one to throw out a greeting or a smile, he stepped aside and didn’t offer to take my bags or ask of my condition—he knew me too well. I threw both bags close to the couch where Father Reilly sat nursing a cup of coffee.
“Welcome,” Father Reilly said with a tip of his cup.
“All three of us in the same room together,” I replied. “There better be a war going on outside to drag me over here.”
Bernard pointed over to Reilly. “This person wants us to go steal some antiques.”
Sounded fun so far. “Okay…”
Bernard nodded toward Father Reilly. “Go ahead. Tell her.”
Reilly placed the coffee cup on the table. “The third letter of Fátima—”
Oh no. “We’ve been down this road before,” I said, about half ready to call the cab back and return to something important.
“Hear me out,” Reilly insisted with a chagrined look on his face. “There’s an antiques dealer in Malta who specializes in Greek artifacts.”
“Black market, of course,” Bernard added.
“But what’s the point of—”
“The third secret,” Reilly continued. “Some academic—a mathematician—in Brazil analyzed it again and she found that it contained a cipher, that the letter itself was a kind of cipher, embedded and woven in the text. It was dependent on syntax and sound to decipher. We’ve been reading it wrong.”
I glanced at Bernard and he shot me a “What can I do?” look. “Assuming I believe you,” I said, “what the hell does it say?”
“That they have always been here, Sara,” Reilly said. “Since before the church. Since before any church.” He sat back and glared at me.
Bernard shook his head. “The point being that this antiques dealer has artifacts that will confirm it. To what end, we can only guess.”
“The Congregation of Gibilmanna was an ancient Catholic order in Sicily that apparently was in possession of the artifacts before their monastery was pillaged by the Moors,” Reilly insisted. He got up and began to pace the room. “They were then handed down through generations, and then found their way to this particular antiques dealer.”
I sighed, wanting him to know how angry I was. “I’ll give you three days of my time,” I said. “But first you need to get me out of this frozen wasteland.”
We took an old Lada Niva that was lent to us by the owner of the cabin. The Niva was one of the most famous Russian-made off-road vehicles ever built. This one was circa 1970 and had a peculiar design that made me doubt whether we would make it five feet in this snow. Picture an old Fiat with large tires capable of all weather and all terrain.
The car bounded up and down with the holes and the snow and the ever-present rocks and tree limbs, like something in a video game or obstacle course. Have you ever played Mario Kart? Like that but without the friendly mushrooms. I sat in the back next to Bernard, as Reilly was the only one of us who could drive a stick. Needless to say, silent monks don’t make the best travel companions. But we made it to Moscow in about four days. Didn’t I say that I was leaving after three? Guess not…
From Moscow we took a flight to Palermo, Sicily, a drive to the harbor, and a boat to the island of Malta.
We landed in Malta in the middle of the night and wandered about town until we found a bar open all night. It was an old tavern built into a once-abandoned cave used as a fort back in the seventeenth century. The place resembled a wine cellar with empty liquor casket barrels lining the walls, a mosaic floor, and arched doorways. Oddly enough, there was a small bakery in one of the corners serving hot chimney cakes and pastizz. After a couple of hours of beer and cake, we took a cab to a residence about two miles from the coast in the Saint Paul’s Bay neighborhood.
Built in 1922, the two-story building was constructed of stone, with exposed beams and iron handrails. The entire block was a row of identical structures of limestone with wooden apertures and Malta tile.
Father Reilly rapped his fist on the door. It creaked open almost immediately, and a young woman answered. She wore a white flowing dress with a blue apron over it and her hair pulled up.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a raspy British accent.
“Are you De’Ann Saxon?” I said.
She nodded with a fixed gaze.
“I’m wondering if you have some time to talk about some antiques we are interested in purchasing,” I told her as I tried to look at her and see inside the house at the same time.
Her face betrayed no surprise as she stepped aside. We followed her in. Bernard waited outside, following our protocol of having someone outside to keep watch for any unusual activity. He sat across the street at a coffee stand, probably hoping to hear gunfire or something.
De’Ann led us to a small den with a large sea grass rug covering the stone floor and a tattered leather couch. She offered us the couch as she took a seat next to a wooden desk. With a quick pivot, she leaned toward the kitchen and yelled out, “Lee, watch the pot for me and keep stirring it!”
I turned my head in an attempt to see who was in the kitchen, but the angle of the couch prevented it. It bothered me that I couldn’t tell how many people were in there and if they were in there actually cooking or holding weapons, just waiting for the right word.
She turned back to us. “Sorry. I’m making a deer confit. It takes me three days to strain, but is there any other way to make it?” She shrugged. “It passes the time but it also tastes divine.”
“I believe you,” Father Reilly said. “It must taste wonderful.” Almost together, our eyes focused on De’Ann’s hands, which were coated with a dark substance that almost looked like part of her skin, contrasting with the alabaster shade of the rest of her body.
She seemed to notice and lifted up her hands as if showing us a picture. “You’re looking at my tomato hands.”
“What doe
s that mean?” I asked.
“It comes from picking tomatoes—it’s a buildup of tomato tar. Happens when you harvest many, many tomatoes. It actually comes from the green part of the vine.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Father Reilly said.
“It’s a bitch to get off,” De’Ann added. “I’m talking gasoline and alcohol.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” he replied.
“So what types of artifacts were you looking for?” De’Ann asked.
“Greek,” I answered.
She cocked her head to consider this for a moment. “Well, of course I can show you some of our artifacts that might be of interest, if you’ll follow me to the basement,” De’Ann said with a slight smile. She rose up from her chair.
My senses perked up. This felt weird. In this brief moment she had summed us up as serious buyers willing to pay thousands if not millions of dollars? It felt like a trap but there were no other options at this point. Our intel had told us this was the place where we would find some answers. We were in this the entire way.
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