Angel’s Guilty Pleasures

The driver peeled off the main street onto an exit dedicated to the graveyard, and death washed over me.

Prim paid for the ride and we stepped out of the car. The cemetery rose before us like a ziggurat of the dead. Stories and stories of tombs were carved into the hillside like a morbid honeycomb.

“Here we are.” Prim waved her arms dramatically in the fading light. “Cementiri de Montjuic—The Jewish Mountain. I’m pretty sure this is where Barcelona keeps its best ghosts.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. The rocky slopes shivered with soul streams, more than I could count, more than I could comprehend. The necropolis called to me from its dusky shadows. A whirlwind of wailing reached my ears. I turned to the clutch of tourists beside us, but they seemed unaware of the otherworldly voices.

We started ahead slowly, but just inside the front entrance my feet began to slide forward. A nervous look overtook Prim’s face, and she peered around us. A cluster of visitors wandered past. If I didn’t get hold of this pulling, someone would see. My stomach tingled. That usually happened just before my feet left the ground, but I hadn’t harnessed a single soul yet. It felt as though the graveyard itself was tugging me to its buried heart.

“Mel. Lock it down,” Prim murmured as a couple drifted toward the exit.

“I’m trying.” It wasn’t a lie, but the full truth was that it felt good to be this close to the dead again. My brain was slipping toward Stage One sleep, and I didn’t want to fight it.

“Over here.” Prim nudged me to the left, and I followed her through a set of trees and into a labyrinth of mausoleums. Long, curving walkways snaked down rows of monoliths and towering funerary sculptures. Angels guarded over almost every tomb. Some knelt in eternal prayer. Others prepared to take flight and bear the souls of the dearly departed up to heaven. Some watched with eyes too filled with awareness to be made of stone.

We cut across a row of tombs topped with skeletons carved inside flowing marble robes. Their empty eye sockets pointed toward the scudding clouds.

“It’s just down there.” Prim pointed and then skidded to a stop.

“What’s wrong?”

Her hand lifted to silence me. A legion of ghostly spiders marched up my arms as she turned slowly toward me.

“They’re here,” she breathed. Her voice was almost too soft to hear over the moans and random wails all around me.

“Can we…can we hide?”

Prim locked eyes on me and shook her head.

“It’s too late.”

“No.”

“Do you see the angel over my shoulder? The one holding the book?”

“Yes.”

“Run to it and place your apple on the open pages. If she accepts your offering, the door will open.”

“Wait. Aren’t you coming with me?”

“I can’t. I’ll try to stop them.”

“What do you mean? I’ve never been here before. I don’t know the way.” I gripped her cool hand. “You can’t stop vampires. No one can.”

“You know the way through the world of the dead better than anyone. Go!”

Paralysis stole through my muscles when she shouted. It was too much of a startle. I rocked forward, and she caught me. Narcolepsy dropped me to the ground. It would never care what peril I was in. It didn’t concern itself with my preservation. It existed to do one thing and one thing only—shut me down.

“I can’t. My legs.”

I looked up at Prim, but her hazel human eyes had emptied to twin pits of aching darkness. I tore my gaze from her doomsayer eyes before they could fix on mine and rip my future from me.

My mouth fell open as my jaw unhinged. I watched through lowering lashes as the world wept, then wavered, then washed away.