by T. Frohock
Ysa heard the snap of a bag opening followed by the sharp click of vials placed on the credenza. She counted fourteen clicks.
“It’s imperative that I speak to him.” Strzyga kept his voice low, but Ysa detected an edge of frustration to his tone. “We’ve waited too long for a war like this, and our nefilim won’t be reassured if the angel-born are led by an addict.”
He’s making a clear distinction between the angel-born and his nefilim. She squeezed the book between her palms. He is daimon-born. That explained the dark glasses inside the château.
What was Jimenez up to? Or perhaps the better question was: How could she use this knowledge to her advantage?
Her uncle’s tremendous tolerance for drugs was no secret. Diago often suggested that the morphine Jordi took merely prevented withdrawal and did little to affect his judgment. From what she’d witnessed so far, she found she agreed.
The sound of Jimenez scurrying across the floor and the clink of vials told Ysa he was moving the morphine into his room. “I understand your frustration, Herr Strzyga. I just need a little more time to set up a meeting. It’s just that the war—”
Strzyga cut Jimenez off. “Can you afford to open another front in this war?” The bag snapped shut. “Get me an interview with him. Or your last source of morphine in this city will dry up. And then how much favor will you find with him, Herr Doctor?”
“Give me another day, and I will be in touch. I swear it. Let me see you to the door.”
Ysa held perfectly still until she was sure they were gone. Stretching her legs, she wiggled her toes and sighed with relief. Courts were hotbeds of intrigue, with courtiers always maneuvering for favor. But conspiring with the daimon-born?
It was all quite peculiar. Slipping her feet back into her shoes, she stood and returned the book to its shelf. The clock told her she still had an hour until lunch. And according to Jimenez, Uncle Jordi is in a meeting elsewhere in the château.
The corridor outside the library was clear. Ysa left and returned to the landing. From her few visits to the château, she knew Rousseau’s private chambers were on the third floor. She was positive Jordi’s pride wouldn’t allow him to accept any accommodations other than those of the queen herself.
What could it hurt to take a look? She recalled the strange laughter she’d heard last night, but the daylight chased those ghosts away. Walking on tiptoe to keep her heels from clacking on the marble steps, she started up the stairs.
At the next landing, the corridor’s lights were dimmed and the shadows grew deeper. Here, she felt as if she’d stepped back into the night. Although sigils twisted on every door in both wings, their fires smoldered rather than burned.
Except on the door at end of the hall. That glyph blazed with the Totenkopfring design on Jordi’s signet. Sparks crackled around both the skull and the runes.
Ysabel eased closer. The hair on her body rose in response to the electricity in the air.
This wasn’t the place to test her glyph-breaking skills. If she knew for a fact where he was and when he would return, she might have risked peeking inside his room.
But I can knock gently. It would give her an idea of the strength of his sigils.
She formed a small ward of her own and sent it forward, timid as a light peck upon the door. The deep auburn tones of her aura touched Jordi’s glyphs and melded with them as one. She felt a mild jolt that tingled across her skin.
Then, to her surprise, Jordi’s sigil blazed once before it dimmed. The door opened.
Make a note: Jimenez is a liar. “Uncle Jordi?” she called as she sidled another step closer. “May we speak?”
“Come in.” His voice drifted into the hall, soft and melodic. Once more, she thought of her father. Except, where her father’s voice awakened the memory of hearth fires holding back the night, Jordi’s tonal frequencies brought to mind the colder drifts of space.
Even so, she didn’t wait for a second invitation. She walked to the door and pushed it open. Although the suite occupied the area directly over hers, it was twice the size of her room. A huge bed dominated the wall near the fireplace.
At the opposite end of the room, beside the window, was a Rococo piano made of Brazilian rosewood. Three exquisitely carved legs held the body erect.
Though the music stand was sculpted in swirls that indicated angelic glyphs, the width and height of it matched the piano’s broad dimensions. It was a beast of an instrument—large and imposing, gleaming in the morning light.
A manly piano for a manly-man. She noted the room’s furnishings matched the piano in tone. The curtains around the bed were crimson velvet. Subtler reddish hues were entwined in the room’s décor.
Red, the color of kings. Her father’s contempt for such trappings had been drilled into her consciousness over the years until she, like him, found herself avoiding the color whenever possible.
Jordi showed no such restraint. He surrounded himself with powerful lines, from the gilded border on the wall’s pale boiserie to the brocade adorning the thick carpets. His black writing desk was also trimmed with brash lines of gold-leaf.
That was where she finally found him—at the desk. His back was to her. He wore a voluminous robe that reminded her of Diago’s favorite garment, which looked more like a houppelande with its long flowing sleeves. Jordi’s robe wasn’t as intricately embroidered as Diago’s, but the two men favored fine silks padded for warmth.
And attire from the same century. She wondered if it was because it reminded them of their youth. Not that it mattered. She swore she would never allow herself to become entrapped by a period’s styles.
Jordi continued to write. “I could have murdered you five times over since you’ve walked through my door.”
“If you’d wanted to kill me, you would have done it by now. What boggles my mind is how you allow a hostage to wander through your house unattended. Aren’t you the least curious as to why I’m not sleeping the sleep of the drugged in my room?”
His pen never wavered. “Because Jimenez is incompetent.”
And a traitor to you. Her instinct told her now wasn’t the time to make that accusation. “It wasn’t so much his incompetence but my skill as a doctor.”
“I am impressed.”
Ysabel knew sarcasm when she heard it. “It sounds like you’re humoring me.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re here through Jimenez’s incompetence or your competence. I’m not afraid of children.”
“Perhaps you should be.”
“They warned me that you are a precocious child.”
“I’m not a child.” Her rebuttal sounded peevish to her own ears.
A note of amusement touched his voice. “But you are precocious.” He signed off on a form and turned to another as he dipped his pen in the inkwell again. “I said we would have lunch together. A woman would have waited, a child has no patience.”
“And a man would have immediately sought you out to parley. I’m not a child. I simply don’t woman well some days.”
His pen faltered and he put it down. Turning in his seat, he met her gaze. “What does that mean: you don’t woman well?”
“Women are expected to be demure and quiet. We’re to patiently await the attention of men. That is what it means to be a woman, and I’ve no use for masculine perceptions of femininity.”
“Those are the expectations of mortals, not nefilim.”
She arched her eyebrow at him. “Apparently not all the nefilim received that memo. Many of them take on mortal attitudes and allegiances.” A pointed look in the direction of his immaculate black uniform on the headless mannequin was her only indication that Jordi also mimicked mortal pretensions.
He followed her gaze. “Perceptive, but also wrong. The double lightning bolt, the SS insignia, those were . . . repurposed by the mortals. In some cases, Queen Jaeger sent her nefilim to guide the mortals in their beliefs.”
“You mean like Wiligut?” Karl Maria Wiligut, known as Himmler�
�s Rasputin, claimed that he designed the death’s head symbology of the SS. “Didn’t he say he was the spiritual heir of the nefilim?”
Jordi’s nod of appreciation, when it came, was barely perceptible but there nonetheless. “He was the progeny of a lesser nefil, probably eleventh or twelfth generation and angel-born. Far enough removed to have strong psychic abilities for a mortal, but according to our laws of consanguinity, a mortal nonetheless.”
“Didn’t he go mad?”
Jordi made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “A small sacrifice.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so callous.”
“I’m not. We’re giving the mortals the belief systems they need.” He opened a casket on his desk and removed a gold wedding band from the box.
Ysabel’s eyes narrowed. She recognized the sigils on the band. It was the ring Jordi had stolen from Miquel at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Though her father had fashioned a new one for Miquel, he still mourned the loss of his first wedding ring. And now Jordi toys with it like a trophy.
Jordi slipped the band onto his left ring finger and pretended to admire the sigils. “In Spain, for example, it was Christianity . . .” He paused and examined her more closely. “Are you old enough to remember the Spanish War?”
“I was twelve when it began.”
“Then you probably recall that in Spain, the mortals revered Christianity. That particular religiosity was so entrenched, we merely manipulated their beliefs to benefit our politics. We made them afraid they were about to lose their precious religion to secularism; although the most influential rebels didn’t care about religion—they simply wanted the power to control other people’s beliefs. Once we were able to divide them on an ideological basis, we set them against one another on the military fields.
“Likewise, in Germany, we used the Armanists, Ariosophists, and those that dabble in the occult to achieve the same means. We saw the Germans’ collective self-esteem had taken a terrific blow from the loss of the Great War. We simply rebuilt their sense of self-worth through the concept of racial superiority—propaganda they desperately wanted to believe—and in doing so, we gave their lives meaning. That is what gods do.”
Ysabel felt as if she’d stepped into an abyss. She didn’t know where to begin. “Wouldn’t it be better if we taught them to love one another?”
Jordi chuckled. Whether it was her naivete that amused him or the thought of mortals living in harmony, she didn’t know.
“Take the blinders off your eyes, child. The mortals are merely pale echoes of us. They want what we all want—power. Even in love, they look to dominate each other.”
He stood and approached her. It was all she could do to remain still.
Taking her hands in his, he gazed deep into her eyes and allowed the nimbus of his aura to expand. “But mortals will never have this.”
Deep golden hues filled with umber and red smoldered all around him. The flames of his song struck the air and diminished his mortal form until he almost appeared as an angel in their truest manifestation of light and sound.
Her vertigo returned, weakening her knees even as she allowed her own aura to flow around her in self-defense. She kept her feet, but just barely. Crimson flames streaked with gold and orange flowered around her body. With the colors of her own song shielding her eyes, she saw deep into Jordi’s core.
And his aura wasn’t untainted. Sickly green threads twisted through his song. The Grigori. Jordi was still contaminated by the fallen angel he’d served during the Spanish Civil War. Papá wasn’t able to heal him completely and he still bears the Grigori’s mark.
Jordi’s grip tightened. The bones in her wrists ached.
She forced herself to meet his gaze.
“Your aura is pure.” He relaxed his hold on her but didn’t let go. “Do you know why this is?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he leaned close and whispered in her ear. “The Thrones themselves dictate the nefilim’s genealogical lines. They mate nefilim and angels with meticulous attention to detail. You, my dear niece, are the culmination of centuries of planning. A grand success in the cosmic scheme.”
His snaking rhetoric unsettled her. He bends the meaning of our existence into something that it’s not. She sought a clear path through his tangled discourse. “That doesn’t make us gods.”
“To the mortals we are.” His aura flared around him, and then gradually receded. He drew his soul close to his body and released her.
Ysa clutched the doorjamb to steady herself.
With his thumb, Jordi caressed Miquel’s wedding band and returned to his seat. “Play for me.”
Halos encircled the light fixtures. She flexed her hands and noted the faint bruises encircling her wrists. Needing a moment to get her breath, she stalled him. “Will we exchange songs?”
It was a reasonable request and a matter of professional etiquette that when one nefil played for another, they exchanged songs. To see the flash of another nefil’s aura wasn’t the same as hearing them sing. To play, to sing, this proved the nefil’s ability to manifest either emotion or magic through the power of their voice.
“I want to see the type of nefil my softhearted brother has raised. Impress me.”
“As a child, a woman, or a man?”
A smile tugged at his lips. “As you will.”
Ysa went to the monstrous piano and sat on the padded bench. “Is there anything in particular that you’d like to hear? A rousing rendition of the ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’? Or would you prefer Wagner?”
“You have your father’s sense of humor.”
“I’m glad I could lighten the moment.”
“I didn’t say you were funny.”
She directed a tight smile at him and raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
“Give me an original composition.”
Something original. The long white keys were slender as finger bones. She kicked off her heels and adjusted her feet over the pedals. A quick run through the scales allowed her to get a feel for the instrument and to think. Her mind kept wandering back to last night, and the hallucination of her father kneeling beside her on the kitchen floor.
As she thought of him, her fingers wandered to the lower notes, striking a pattern like the sound of his hammer on the anvil. The melody turned to smoke and fog as she fled into the night. Diago appeared as earthy chords cementing Juanita’s more ethereal notes within the ice and cold. Rafael’s leitmotif carried the pulse of his youth and courage, while Miquel’s presence emerged with a militaristic beat. All around them, the snow swarmed in falling sigils, pale and blue against the night.
Her fingers momentarily faltered as she spun Jordi’s theme across the keyboard. He rose from the night, at first as a monster, and then she recalled the tenderness in his voice.
You should have been my daughter.
She repeated the chords of that last line with the longing she’d heard in his voice. You should have been mine.
When she finished the piece, she sat still as the notes faded.
In the ensuing silence, she became aware of a clock ticking softly in the background. She counted a hundred beats before Jordi finally spoke.
“It doesn’t have an ending.”
She turned to face him, unsure what to expect. Rather than the contempt she was sure would be there, she found only curiosity. “What do you mean?”
“You played the events of last night, but you didn’t give it an ending.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how it will end yet. Neither do you.”
Withdrawing a handkerchief from his sleeve, he patted the sweat from his brow and winced.
The morphine. He’s in withdrawal. She immediately thought of Strzyga and Jimenez conferring in the hall. Maybe now is the time to tell him about them. She opened her mouth, but he turned back to his work.
“I need to change before lunch. I’ll meet you in the foyer. Then we will discuss The Book of Gold and your father.” He pressed a button on his intercom
. “Stultz, come escort Fräulein Ramírez downstairs.”
A young soldier in uniform came to the doorway and snapped his heels as he gave Jordi a Sieg Heil salute. “Sir!” Then he bowed to Ysabel. “Fräulein, if you please.”
She didn’t please. Not at all. But she also knew she would gain nothing by antagonizing her uncle. For now, keeping him happy meant obeying him.
Besides, while her little adventure might not have seemed exciting on the surface, she’d gathered more information than she’d hoped. War, Miquel had taught her, was much more a measure of risk and strategy than the application of brute force. The objective was to gain intelligence about the enemy, analyze it, and then apply the information to gain leverage against the foe.
Ysa had accomplished the first part; now she needed time to think.
In the foyer, Ysa took a seat in an alcove and observed the château’s visitors. Various officers, both nefilim and mortals, came and went on Reich business.
One mortal in particular caught her eye as he entered the building. He wore a patch over his left eye, and it was apparent that his right hand was a prosthesis. As he withdrew his identification, she noted that two fingers on his left hand were missing.
Due to the nature of his injuries, Ysabel instantly placed him: Claus von Stauffenberg. According to Los Nefilim’s intelligence, Stauffenberg had ties to another mortal, Henning von Tresckow, a leading member of the German resistance. Thus far, they’d hatched no fewer than three plots to assassinate Hitler. All of which had failed. But mortals, like nefilim, could be exceptionally persistent.
As she had in the library, Ysa became very still. Wolves stalked their prey with less intensity than she watched the mortal at the door. I wonder who he is here to see?
The answer came sooner than she expected. Erich Heines strode into view and greeted Stauffenberg. Although she wasn’t close enough to hear their discussion, it was clear by their smiles they knew one another well. Heines gestured toward the western wing and they moved off together.
Ysa tapped the arm of her chair thoughtfully and tucked that information alongside Jimenez’s dealing with the daimon-born. With any luck, she might get the opportunity to talk to Heines alone.