Angelopolis A Novel

The Third Circle

GLUTTONY

Angelopolis, Chelyabinsk, Russia


Dr. Merlin Godwin noted the heaviness of Evangeline’s breath, the labored flickering of her eyes, the expression of despair that crossed her face whenever she came back into consciousness. The last time he saw her she had been a little girl. She had stared at him with intransigent curiosity. He had spent twenty-five years looking for her, all the while hoping to have her just as he did now, weak as a dragonfly dessicated in the sun.

“Come, come, have some water,” he said, when she opened her eyes once more. Smiling, he poured water over her lips, letting it drip over her chin. The drugs were effective. Even if the straps were loosened she wouldn’t have the strength to lift her head.

“Do you remember me?” he whispered, caressing her arm with his finger. When it was clear that Evangeline had no clue who he was, he added, his voice little more than a whisper. “It was so long ago, but surely you recall how you came to see me with your mother.”

At Angela Valko’s request, Godwin had handled the scheduling of the visits, asking only that he organize the sessions with Evangeline when the lab was empty. As a result, they had met early in the morning or later in the evening, when the others had left the building. He had examined Evangeline himself, taking her pulse, listening to her breathe. He couldn’t help being moved at how the stolid Angela Valko, renowned for her sangfroid in the most unnerving situations, held her daughter close, steadying the girl’s trembling body as the needle slid into the vein, the bright vermilion blood drawn swiftly into the barrel of the syringe. The clinical nature of the procedure seemed to reassure Angela but not Evangeline—she had an instinctual fear that seemed to Godwin to belong less to a little girl than to a wild animal caught in a cage.

During each session, Angela watched the procedure with rapt attention, and Godwin could never tell if she felt anxiety or curiosity, if she secretly hoped to discover something unusual in the blood. But there was never anything at all unusual about the results when they came back from the lab. Still, Godwin had kept a sample from each session, labeling the vials and locking them in his medical case.

“Your mother insisted on the exams herself,” Godwin whispered, dabbing a drop of water from Evangeline’s chin. “And although she demonstrated a reasonable concern for your well-being, it’s difficult to understand the motives of a mother subjecting her own child to such invasive scrutiny. Unless, of course, she was not entirely human.”

Evangeline tried to speak. She had been heavily drugged. Although her voice was weak, and she could not focus her eyes, Godwin understood her when she said, “But my mother was human.”

“Yes, well, Nephilistic traits can appear in a human being, manifesting like a cancer,” Godwin said, walking to a table of medical instruments. A series of scalpels, the edges of varying acuity, lay in a line as if waiting for him. He chose one—not the sharpest but not the dullest either—and returned to Evangeline. “Both you and your mother appeared to be human, but angelic qualities could have—how shall I say it?—blossomed in you like a black and noxious flower. No one can say for sure why it happens, and it is quite rare for a human-born creature to transform, but it has occurred in the past.”

“And if there had been a change?” Evangeline asked.

“I would have been very pleased to have seen this happen,” Godwin said, his fingers rolling the scalpel. Once upon a time he had been Angela’s most prized student, the first in years to be granted his own laboratory, and the only one to be taken into her confidence. What she had not considered, and what he had not allowed her to see, was the extent of his ambition. “Unfortunately, neither of you showed signs of being anything but human. Your blood was red, for example, and you were born with a navel. But if you had changed, or shown signs of changing, and the angelologists had discovered this, you would have been handled in the usual fashion.”

“Which is?”

“You would have been studied.”

“You mean to say that we would have been killed.”

“You did not know your mother well,” Godwin said, lightly. “She was above all else a scientist. Angela would have applauded the rigorous empirical study of any one of the creatures. She allowed you to be tested. Indeed, she pushed to have you studied.”

“And if I were one of them?” Evangeline asked. “Would she have sacrificed me?”

Godwin wanted to smile. He bit his lip instead, and concentrated upon the cold metal of the scalpel. “It makes no difference what she would have wanted. If there had been any sign of a genetic likeness to the Nephilim, and the society was alerted to this fact, you would have been removed from your mother’s care.”

Evangeline strained against the leather straps. “My mother would have resisted.”

“That her father was a Grigori was completely unknown at the time. Her heritage was hidden—from herself, from other agents—out of necessity. Your grandmother Gabriella understood that if it were known that Angela was an angel, such a taint would have ruined them both. The threat was not in what she was, but what she could become. Or, rather,” Godwin said, meeting Evangeline’s eye, “the danger was in her genetic potential—in what her body could create.”

“The threat was me.”

“I wouldn’t say that you pose much of a threat, Evangeline,” Godwin said, placing the scalpel on Evangeline’s neck and pressing it against her skin.

Godwin slid the sharp edge under Evangeline’s white skin until a bulb of blue blood rose, collecting into a globe. He watched it rise and fall over her collarbone, pooling and expanding in the arc of her neck. He took a glass vial from the table. Holding it to the light, he felt a surge of triumph.


Hermitage Bridge, Winter Canal, St. Petersburg

Verlaine’s thoughts were in a state of chaos as he walked with Vera and Bruno alongside the palace embankment, the dark water of the canal sluicing by below, glistening as if coated with a layer of oil. Two grand buildings rose on each side of the stone pathway, ornate and Italianate, and, for a moment, Verlaine had the feeling he was walking through a historical film about the Renaissance, that noblemen in velvet cloaks would step from behind the shadows. The contrast between his physical surroundings and the images playing in his mind—of Angela and Percival and the syringe filled with the virus—left him disoriented.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vera gesture from one building to the other. “Old Hermitage and the Hermitage Theater.”

Verlaine stepped ahead, replaying the film in his mind. Of all he had seen in the Hermitage, the image of Percival Grigori haunted him most. His golden wings, his long body glistening with the amber excretion, the ropes cinching his wrists and ankles—Percival had been a sublime creature, one that Verlaine didn’t fear so much as admire. Of course Verlaine had seen such angels before. He’d interrogated many in much the same fashion as Angela had. But now something had shifted inside him. Now that he had seen Evangeline up close, touched her wings and taken in the chill of her body, it was impossible for Verlaine to think that the Nephilim were simply the enemy, nothing more than horrible parasites that had attached themselves to humanity, devils marked for extermination. He felt both strangely repulsed by the aims and methods of the society and desperate for them to help him find Evangeline.

He turned to Vera. She had caught up with him and was walking by his side, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket.

“There is absolutely no record of this structure, this Angelolopolis, anywhere,” she said, as if they’d been discussing the subject all along. “Not a single angelologist has seen such a place, nor has an expeditionary team attempted to locate one.”

“That is because nobody in his right mind would consider the possibility that the Nephilim would actually construct one,” Bruno said, walking behind them.

Verlaine turned back to look at Bruno. “And yet,” he said, annoyed by Bruno’s dismissive manner, “Percival Grigori spoke of it as if it were already under way.”

“The video was taken nearly three decades ago,” Bruno replied. “If they’d constructed such a thing, we would know about it.”

“Grigori could have been lying,” Vera offered. “An Angelopolis is a utopia of angelic creatures, something everyone hears about at school but never wholly believes to be real. The Nephilim may have wanted to build it, but that doesn’t mean that it was physically possible to do so. It’s a concept more than anything, an idea that has existed for the angels since the great massacre of the Flood.”

“Stories of a mythical angel paradise called an Angelopolis are like Peter Pan’s Never Never Land,” Bruno said.

“But the film points to the fact that the Nephilim—at least Percival Grigori—were working to build it,” Verlaine said. “He mentioned Valkine. They had a sample of Evangeline’s blood. It seems clear to me that whatever they wanted from Evangeline in 1984 is the same motive for why they want her now.”

Vera stopped abruptly and turned to Verlaine. “Evangeline Cacciatore hasn’t been seen since 1999.”

Verlaine looked across the water of the Winter Canal, his gaze settling upon the wide stretch of embankment.

Bruno said, “Evangeline was abducted by an Emim angel last evening in Paris. Verlaine had the honor of speaking with her beforehand. The Cherub with Chariot Egg was in her possession—that is how it came to us.”

“And that is why you came to me,” Vera said.

“You’re our best chance at understanding this,” Verlaine said, struggling to control the sense of urgency he felt. “This can’t all be a coincidence. The Nephilim went after Evangeline for a reason. Angela, the egg, the film, this fairy tale of an Angelopolis—this has to be more than a wild-goose chase.”

“Sure,” Bruno said. “But the function of the Angelopolis, the purpose for building it, its exact location—Percival Grigori didn’t give anything away.”

“True,” Vera said. “We need to find out what was said after the recording stopped.”

“They’re all dead,” Verlaine mumbled. “Vladimir, Angela, Luca—even Percival Grigori.”

“Actually, not all of the participants of that interview are gone,” Bruno said, walking off ahead, scanning the streets for a taxi.

A frigid wind blew off the canal, and Verlaine pulled his jacket close to his body. A cluster of Mara angels stood under the stone archway, the granite façade reflecting the illumination of their sallow skin. They rarely came out in daylight; their sunken eyes spoke of hundreds of years of living in the shadows. Their wings were mottled green and orange with streaks of blue, as iridescent as peacock feathers in the blue light of dawn. There was something disconcerting about seeing the creatures standing before the lovely archway of the bridge, a kind of dislocation that took a moment to adjust to. If it had been a normal morning, and they had been in Paris, Bruno would have insisted that they take the whole lot of them in.

After what seemed like an eternity, a beat-up station wagon rattled to the curb and stopped abruptly. Bruno gave the driver an address and they climbed in. As they pulled away, Verlaine noticed a sleek black car emerge behind them. It followed them, keeping an even pace with the taxi.

“You see that?” Vera asked.

Bruno nodded. “I’m keeping my eye on it.”

Verlaine leaned against the door and watched the car, waiting for Vera to meet his eye. She smiled slightly and brushed her hand over his. Her gesture was ambiguous, and he was certain she meant it to be that way.

• • •

The taxi sped past the Theatre Arts Academy on Mokhovaya Street and, after crossing Pestel, let them off on a narrow avenue lined with trees. The windows of bars and cafés were lit up, while stores were still shuttered and locked, the glass protected by metal cages.

“Drop us here,” Bruno said, directing the driver to leave them near a crowded bar. They got out and walked some blocks, Bruno looking over his shoulder the whole time before stopping at a shop with weathered stucco chipping from the façade. A sign above the door read LA VIEILLE RUSSIE.

Bruno lifted an iron knocker and let it fall against a metal plate. Verlaine heard the sound of footsteps from somewhere in the house. Suddenly a peephole opened at the center of the door and a large eye peered outside. The door swung back, and the woman from the film, Vladimir’s wife, who had assisted Angela Valko, appeared before them. Nadia—smaller, grayer, and slightly bent—was dressed in a black velvet dress, a ruby brooch pinned at her cleavage. Verlaine looked at his watch—it was nearly seven in the morning.

“Isn’t it a bit early to be going to the opera?” Bruno said, bowing slightly.

“Bruno,” she said, pushing a swirling mass of gray hair over her shoulder.

Bruno bent to kiss her, his lips brushing each cheek. “You knew we were coming.”

“Parisian angelologists aren’t as conspicuous as they used to be,” she said, waving them into a darkened corridor. “Nevertheless, I have friends in the Russian branch of the society who identified your presence at the research center and telephoned me. Come in, come in. You should be careful. I may not be the only one who knows you’ve arrived in St. Petersburg.”

The interior of the house was distinctly French. They walked through a corridor and into a drawing room paneled in dark wood and red velvet, with Second Empire wallpaper, its panels clotted with flowers climbing the walls. A great chandelier hung from the ceiling, the crystals muted in the half light. Nadia led them through into a smaller chamber, the walls dripping with Russian Orthodox icons. The paintings were of every size and shape and hung so close together—the edge of one frame cutting into the next—that it appeared the walls were covered in a brilliant, gilded armor.

When Nadia noticed Verlaine examining the paintings she said, “My father loved Orthodox icons and opened up the back room of his antique shop in Paris to Russian painters when they needed support. In exchange for paint and brushes, he accepted their work. At the time, this was a more or less even exchange. Now, as you can imagine, they hold a certain historical, as well as a sentimental, value. These images are a record of an era that has disappeared. When I see them I recall what it was like to be in exile, the long lunches in the garden with my parents and their friends, the low murmur of Russian, with its elegant, yet biting, resonance. These icons form a museum of my youth.”

As if remembering that she was not alone, Nadia turned and led them onward, taking them through a succession of narrow rooms filled with birdcages and marble busts. A cabinet of butterflies stood against a wall with hundreds of colorful specimens pinned to boards inside, a copper plaque naming the collection as belonging to Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov. When Verlaine drew closer to examine them, the rows of powdery wings cast a sinister sensation over him, a kind of illusion of perspective. Suddenly he realized that the specimens were actually feathers from the wings of angels. He saw the bright yellow wings of Avestan angels, those beautiful but toxic creatures whose wings dripped with poison; the iridescent green wings of Pharzuph, the dandies of the angel world, whose feathers blanched blue and purple in a certain light, like the scales of a fish in an aquarium; the lavender and orange wings of the Andras scavenger angels; the pearlescent white wings of the Phaskein enchantress angels, whose voices invoked daydreaming and listlessness; the flat green wings of the Mapa parasite angels, who occupied the souls of human beings, feeding off the warmth of the living. Verlaine himself had a Linnaean catalog of many of these varieties stored in his mind—only he’d never had the nerve to preserve them. The thought of killing and cataloging the creatures both fascinated and sickened him.

“The Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov was a very special man,” Nadia said, noting Verlaine’s interest. “With the help of a Russian chemist, he made a preservative that could envelop an angel’s feather and fix it, a marvelous feat, something along the lines of being able to encapsulate the contours of a scent or of an illusion. Dmitri gave these feather samples to my parents, who knew him during his time in exile. Indeed, that was the same period that Dmitri assisted his lover, Coco Chanel, in the creation of her perfumes, most notably her famous No. 5. Some people say he gave her the idea to use a secret ingredient: the wing fibers of a Phaskein angel. Ms. Chanel had connections with many Nephilim, and so this is not startling information. More interesting is that she managed to keep her perfumes in production for so long, and that the secret ingredient is used still in limited-edition batches of the perfume. It is the favorite scent of Nephilim everywhere. It was no coincidence that Chanel was embroiled in intrigues during the Nazi occupation. She had connections with Nephilim that went back to the Russian Revolution.”

Verlaine was at a loss for how to interpret this information. The imperial family’s Nephilistic lineage was well-known—their downfall was celebrated by the society as a great victory—but he had never imagined how this might manifest among their descendants. If Dmitri Romanov was a Nephil, what in the hell was he doing collecting feather specimens from fellow angelic creatures? What sorts of people were Nadia’s parents that they had associated with him? How did his connection with Chanel, and the Nazis, play into his family history? He wanted to press Nadia to tell him more, but a look from Bruno signaled that he should let it drop, and so he followed Nadia in silence to the far end of the room.

After unlocking a wooden door, she ushered them into a larger space. It took a moment for Verlaine to get his bearings, but soon he realized that they had just walked through the back door of the antique shop. An enormous brass cash register sat on a polished oak table, its gleaming keys reflected in a large plate-glass window that opened onto the street. The scent of tobacco hung heavily in the air, as if the residue of decades of cigarette smoke coated the walls.

Verlaine maneuvered through the room. It had been filled to capacity with curiosities: a barometer, a mannequin displaying a large muscovite headdress, and Baroque chairs upholstered in silk. One wall had been hung with mirrors in gilded frames. There were porcelain figurines, oil paintings of Russian soldiers, an engraving of Peter the Great, and a pair of golden epaulets. Verlaine noted the irony of a French-born Russian woman selling prerevolutionary Russian antiques to post-Soviet Russians in twenty-first-century St. Petersburg. Painted across the glass window in inverted letters were the words: LA VIEILLE RUSSIE, ANTIQUAIRE.

“Forgive the clutter,” Nadia said. “After my parents died, I took over La Vieille Russie. Now the entire stock of the antique shop is stored here.”

Another woman entered and stirred the dying embers in the fireplace, adding wood until a glow of warmth and light filled the room. Verlaine realized that the antique shop doubled as a guest apartment: There was a daybed and a cupboard with boxes of tea and jars of honey. Mismatched chairs, piano benches, stools, and trunks were scattered through the shop. Nadia gestured that they should sit.

Vera nudged his arm and nodded to a wall and whispered, “Look, it’s another missing egg.”

Verlaine turned his gaze to a framed oil painting behind Nadia. It was a portrait of a child, painted in creams and browns and golds. The thick application of paint gave the flesh a glossy texture. The child was five or six years old, dressed in a white smock trimmed with lace. Verlaine’s gaze lingered a moment on the large blue eyes, the abundance of curly brown hair, the rosy hue of the little hands that—to his amazement—held a pale Fabergé egg.

“The girl in the portrait is me,” Nadia said. “Painted in Paris by a friend of my father’s. The egg was Alexandra’s beloved Mauve Egg, given to her in 1897, in the happiest period of her marriage.”

Verlaine looked from the old woman to the painting. Although there was a resemblance in the eyes, little else connected her to the image. The painted Nadia displayed a childish innocence that was reflected in the trinket cupped in her hands. Rendered with quick impressionistic brushstrokes, the details of the egg were difficult to make out. Verlaine could see the Mauve Egg with what appeared to be hazy portraits on the surface. Looking from the painting to Nadia, he found that he was helpless to gauge the significance of finding this, the third in a set of eight treasures that had been lost for nearly a century. He felt as desperate, and as childish, as Hansel following a path of shiny pebbles.

“You will eat something,” Nadia said. “And then we will talk.”

“I don’t know if we have time for that,” Verlaine said.

“I remember how hard Vladimir worked,” she said quietly. “He would be out on a mission for days at a time without eating properly. He would return to me exhausted. Eat, and then you can tell me why you’ve come.”

As if her words brought him back to his body, Verlaine felt a sharp shock of hunger, and he realized he hadn’t so much as thought of food since before his encounter with Evangeline. How strange it would feel, he thought, to be like Evangeline, a creature suspended above the physical needs of human beings. Even hours after seeing her he felt a sharp need to be near her. He had to find her, and, once he did, to understand her. Where was she now? Where had Eno brought her? He saw Evangeline in his mind, her pale skin and dark hair, the way she had looked at him on the rooftop in Paris. The brittle exterior he had developed in his work cracked a little more with every thought of her. He needed to steel his resolve if he was to have any hope of finding her.

Nadia cleared a set of encyclopedias from a slate tabletop and, opening a trunk, removed a stack of porcelain bowls and a handful of silver spoons, which she wiped with a cloth as she laid the table. The woman who had lit the fire returned some minutes later with a tureen of kasha and then a platter of cured salmon. She poured water into a samovar by the tea cupboard, turned it on, and left the room.

The very smell of food made Verlaine ravenous. As they ate, refilling their soup bowls until the tureen was empty, he could feel his body become warm, his strength and energy returning. Nadia took a dusty bottle of Bordeaux from an armoire, opened it, and filled their glasses with wine the color of crushed blackberries. Verlaine took a sip, tasting the fruit and tannin prick his tongue.

He could sense Nadia was watching them, studying their gestures, assessing their body language. She was someone who understood the work of angelologists, who had seen the best of their kind in action. She was deciding if she could trust them.

Finally, she said, “I understand that you were with Vladimir during his last mission.”

“Bruno and I were with him in New York,” Verlaine answered.

“Can you tell me if he was buried?” Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear her. “I’ve been trying to get information from the academy, but they won’t confirm anything.”

“He was cremated,” Bruno said. “His ashes are being held in New York.”

Nadia bit her lip, thinking this over, and said, “I would like to ask a favor of you. Could you help me get them transported to Russia? I would like to have them with me.”

Bruno nodded, and in the austerity of the gesture, Verlaine could almost taste the regret over what had happened to Nadia’s husband.

She stood and left the room, returning with a pear tart, which she cut into slices and served on gilded dessert plates, releasing the scent of caramelized sugar and cloves. She dispensed the tea from the samovar, pouring it into teacups shaped like tulips.

“Nadia, there is a specific reason that we came to you,” Bruno said.

“I gathered that there was something on your mind.” She straightened in her chair as Bruno gave her the Cherub with Chariot Egg wrapped in cloth.

Nadia slid a pair of reading glasses onto her nose and, pulling the cloth away, examined the egg, her hands shaking. Her face became flushed; her eyes brightened. Verlaine could see that she was struggling to contain her reactions.

“Where did you get this?” she asked at last, her voice filled with excitement.

“It was found among Vladimir’s effects by your daughter and, by various twists and turns over the past twenty-four hours, came into our possession,” Verlaine explained, glancing at Bruno, to see how much information he could divulge.

“We believe that Angela Valko gave it to Vladimir,” Bruno said.

“Perhaps with the intention that he would hold it for Evangeline,” Verlaine added.

“They brought it to me, at the Hermitage, and I was able to help them identify it as one of the missing Fabergé eggs,” Vera said.

“Now I understand why you are here,” Nadia said, weighing the egg in the palm of her hand.

“You recognize it?”

“Of course. It was in my parents’ possession for many years. It was the companion of the egg you see in the portrait.”

“Then you understand its significance?” Verlaine asked.

“Perhaps,” Nadia said quietly. Standing, she walked to a shelf filled with dusty books and removed a leather-bound album. “You should know, however, the egg alone is not significant. It is a mere vessel, a kind of time capsule, something that carries significance inside it, preserving it for the future.”

She pressed the pages flat on a table, gently, so that they were clearly visible. The pages were filled with dried flowers, each blossom fixed by a square of clear wax paper. Some pages contained three or four of the same variety of flower, while others featured only a single petal. Nadia moved the pages under a lamp and the colors sharpened. The rows were neat and meticulous, as if the position of each item had been carefully considered before being assigned its place. There were examples of iris, lily of the valley, whole rosebuds closed tight as a fist, and a number of speckled orchid petals that curled like tongues. There were also flowers that Verlaine didn’t recognize, despite the tags pasted below identifying them in Latin. Some petals were as delicate and transparent as the wings of a moth, their fanning tissues pale and dusted with powder. He was tempted to touch them, but they were so lovely and ephemeral, so delicate, that it seemed they would turn to dust at the slightest contact with his finger.

The flowers formed the original content of the album. On top of this, however, a second layer emerged, more modern, less picturesque, and more haphazard than the first. Notes had been written directly on the pages between the rows of pressed flowers, messy jottings that sprawled at odd angles in a slanted script. Mathematical equations were scrawled in the margins; chemical symbols and formulas written carelessly, as if the notebook had been kept at hand during sessions of laboratory experimentation. There was little order to the notes, or none that Verlaine could discern, and strings of numbers often bled over one sheet and onto the next in complete defiance of the edges.

Nadia flipped through the book until she found a loose yellowed page with sentences scrawled across it in French. “Read this,” she said, giving the album to Verlaine.

And we explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from harming the sons of Noah.

They sat together, silent, considering these cryptic words. Verlaine could feel the direction of their minds turning toward a new path, as if the album were a clearing in a forest of brambles, one that allowed them to move forward.

Suddenly Nadia closed the book, causing dust to rise into the air. “I am the child of average people,” she said, narrowing her eyes, as if challenging them to contradict her. “People whose lives became wrapped up in extraordinary events. Thus my life has been the vehicle for much larger forces, what Vladimir used to call the forces of history and what I call simple human stupidity. My role was but a small one, and my losses have meant little in the scheme of things. And yet I feel them profoundly. I have lost everything to the Nephilim. I hate them with the pure, well-considered hatred of a woman who has lost all that she loves.”

Nadia finished her tea and set the cup on a table.

“Tell us,” Bruno said, taking Nadia’s hand. His gesture was filled with tenderness and patience.

“Perhaps my life would have taken an altogether different turn if it hadn’t been for Angela, who made me her assistant. Without Angela Valko, I would not have met Vladimir, the man whose love changed my life, and I would never have learned how vital my parents’ contribution had been to the cause of angelology.”

The image of Dmitri Romanov’s collection of wings appeared in Verlaine’s mind. “They were involved with the Romanov family?” he asked.

“Before the revolution, my father and mother worked in the household of the last tsar of Russia, Nikolai II, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra. My mother was one of the many governesses for the tsar’s daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. She had come to Russia from France at eighteen years of age and met my father, a stableman who cared for the horses of the tsar’s military regiment, the Yellow Cuirassier, soon after. My parents fell in love and married. They lived and worked in Tsarskoye Selo, where Nikolai and Alexandra took refuge from the more festive life of the royal court in St. Petersburg. The imperial family preferred to live a quiet, domestic existence, albeit one filled with luxuries that ordinary people could hardly imagine.

“My mother—who had been born and raised in Paris—taught the grand duchesses French. She once recounted her memory of assisting the girls with an introduction to the children of a high-ranking French diplomat. The meeting was unusual—the children of kings rarely met the children of diplomats—but whatever the reason for the introduction, my mother was summoned to the dining room and asked to stay near the grand duchesses, to assess their language skills and observe their manners. My mother remained with the duchesses, listening to them speak. She was impressed with the girls’ social graces, but she was even more taken by the treasures displayed throughout the room. Of particular interest were the jeweled Easter eggs given each year to the tsarina by her husband. Positioned in primary locations, they glittered in the sunlight, each one unique but retaining a uniform opulence. She could not have known at the time that in a number of years Nikolai would abdicate and their life at Tsarskoye Selo would end. Not in her wildest dreams would my mother have believed that a number of these eggs would end up in her care.”

Verlaine stole a look at Vera, wondering how all of this was striking her. It seemed that her dubious theories about Easter eggs and royal egg births could be supported by the tsarina’s collection. But Vera’s expression was as impassive as it had been upon his arrival at the Hermitage in the hours before dawn. Her feelings were stored away behind the cold pose of scholarly expertise.

Nadia didn’t appear to notice their reactions at all. She continued, her gaze focused upon something in the distance. “The revolution of 1917 and the murder of the royal family in the village of Ekaterinburg on July 17, 1918, turned my parents’ world upside down. In the brief window of time between the tsar’s abdication in March 1917 and the revolution in October and November of 1917, the tsarina, knowing that they were in danger, endeavored to hide some of her more precious treasures. The jewels stayed with the family until the end—indeed, when the family was gunned down, the bullets lodged themselves between diamonds and pearls—but the larger treasures stayed behind. My parents were simple people, hardworking and loyal to the Romanovs, qualities much admired by Alexandra. And so the tsarina entrusted the location of the hidden treasures to my parents.”

“But the palace at Tsarskoye Selo was pillaged,” Vera said, cutting Nadia off. “The royal treasures were confiscated by the revolutionaries and brought to warehouses, where they were photographed, cataloged, and often disassembled before being sold outside of Russia in an attempt to raise capital.”

“Unfortunately, you are correct,” Nadia said. “My parents were helpless to protect the tsar’s belongings, and so they took what they could carry and fled the country, traveling to Finland, where they remained in the service of a Russian in exile until the end of the First World War. Soon after they settled in Paris where, some years later, they opened an antique store called the Russia of Old.”

“They carried all of this?” Verlaine asked, gesturing to the clutter around them.

“Certainly not,” Nadia replied. “These objects have been acquired over a lifetime of collecting. But my parents did smuggle out a number of treasures. They risked much in doing so.”

Verlaine held up the jeweled egg that had brought them to Nadia. “This egg financed your parents’ life in France,” he said.

“Yes,” Nadia said. “The jeweled egg you hold in your hand and the rose-strawberry guilloche enameled Mauve Egg in the portrait—these are just two of the eight eggs my parents brought out of Russia in 1917. The other object was less flashy but no less valuable.” Nadia gestured to the album and then took it between her gnarled hands. “My parents originally believed it to be a remembrance album. These kinds of albums were fairly common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Young women would press flowers received on special occasions, especially flowers from suitors—corsages, Valentine’s roses, and that sort of thing—as souvenirs. They were in fashion among girls of the upper classes as keepsakes. The four grand duchesses may have collected all of these flowers themselves. It is a curious book, and my parents never fully understood it. What they did understand was this: that the tsarina had prized it. Because of this, they held on to it, refusing to give it up. Over the course of their lifetimes, my parents acquired and sold many imperial treasures. It was how their business began and how their reputation was made. But my mother never sold the eggs, and she never sold the album. Before her death, she gave this book to me.”

“Your parents may not have understood the significance of this book,” Vera said, her voice hard, her eyes glistening with interest. “But surely you must have your own theories about the flowers.”

There was a moment of hesitation, as if Nadia considered the danger of revealing what she knew.

“Nadia,” Bruno said, his voice gentle, as if speaking to the child in the portrait rather than to the old woman. “It was Evangeline who gave the Cherub with Chariot Egg to Verlaine. It was Angela Valko’s daughter who led us here.”

“I guessed as much,” Nadia said, an edge of defiance in her voice. “And that is the reason why I will help you unlock the egg’s meaning.”


Angelopolis, Chelyabinsk, Russia

Evangeline blinked, trying to identify the strange images coming at her, but she could see only faint gradations of light: the flickering of colors moving above; the flash of white at her side; the darkness beyond. She swallowed and a sharp pain tore into her neck, bringing her back to reality. She remembered the stab of the scalpel. She remembered Godwin and his expression of triumph as he filled a glass vial with her blood.

Scanning the ceiling, her gaze followed a swirl of moving color. A projection emanated from a machine—it looked to be a kind of microscope—at the far side of the room. Godwin stood under this kaleidoscope blur, his pale skin absorbing red then purple then blue. A line of text appeared at the bottom of the projection. Evangeline squinted to read it: “2009 mtDNA: Evangeline Cacciatore, age 33, matrilineage of Angela Valko/Gabriella Lévi-Franche.”

Following her gaze, Godwin said, “Years ago, I examined samples of your mother’s DNA. I also examined your mitochondrial DNA, although, strictly speaking, this wasn’t exactly necessary: The female line is preserved completely in the mitochondrial DNA. You, your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother—all the women in your family have an identical mitochondrial genetic arrangement. It is quite beautiful, conceptually. Each woman holds within her the same sequences of DNA as her most ancient female relative; her body is a vessel carrying this code forward.”

Evangeline wanted to respond but found it difficult to speak. The drug was wearing off—she could wiggle her fingers and feel the pain of the incision—but the residue made each word a challenge.

“Don’t try so hard,” Godwin said, moving closer, until he stood directly above her. “There is no point in speaking. Nothing you could say would interest me in the least. It is the one thing that I love about my work—the body expresses everything.”

Evangeline pressed her lips together and, forcing her numb tongue to form words, said, “My mother let you take my blood—why?”

“Ah, you are curious about motives. For me the psychological component of my work with you—the reasons for extracting your blood, the feelings of your mother when she subjected you, her only child, to such exams—is uninteresting to me, to say the least. My work is a razor, cutting through the unnecessary padding of human existence. Feelings, emotional attachments, maternal love—this means nothing at all here in my lab. But, as you are interested in questions of ‘why,’ let me show you something that might fascinate you.”

Godwin walked to his microscope and, after a clinking of glass plates—the changing of slides under a lens—a new image appeared on the ceiling.

“These are the very unsophisticated images I captured of your blood, and your mother’s blood, thirty years ago. It is amazing that I could work with such images at all, they are so imprecise. Technology has changed everything, of course.” Godwin walked to the table and stood by Evangeline’s side. “You cannot see the details, but if you were to look closely, you would note the vast difference between your mother’s blood and your own. Your mother was not an angelic creature. She was the child of Percival Grigori and a human woman. The angelic genes were, in her case, recessive, and she always gave the impression of being human. She looked like her father, but her appearance was just a shell for a wholly human organism. This can be seen in the genetic sequence.” Godwin stepped sideways, so that he was under the second image. “Your blood, however, was instantly recognizable to me—and to your mother as well—as something quite different, something special. It is not at all like your mother’s mixed blood. Nor is it like your grandmother Gabriella’s human blood.”

“But you said that my DNA was identical to theirs,” Evangeline said, squinting to see the image.

“Your mitochondrial DNA is identical,” Godwin said. “But it is not your mitochondrial DNA that interests me. No, it is the genetic inheritance you received from your father that made you what you are.”

Evangeline closed her eyes, trying to understand what Godwin meant. She could see Luca walking at her side, filled with restless energy. He had done everything in his power to take her away from the Nephilim, to protect her, and for this she had always seen him as a man with extraordinary powers. But, in reality, her father was an ordinary human man, with ordinary human characteristics. Godwin must be mistaken. What she had inherited from Luca could not be measured in her blood.



La Vieille Russie, Antiquaire, St. Petersburg

From the moment Bruno saw her in the film—her quiet, thoughtful demeanor obscured by the brighter, more vivid personality of Angela Valko—he suspected that she had all the qualities of the perfect witness, one who watched and listened with great care, filing her experiences away. As Vladimir’s wife, she was both inside and outside of the action, allowing her to bear witness from the sidelines. The trick would be to handle the situation the right way. Verlaine could hardly contain his impatience with the situation, while Vera remained aloof, pretending that Nadia was some minor player. Verlaine he understood, but Bruno didn’t know if he could trust Vera yet, and so he monitored her reactions carefully. The best agents were often the most duplicitous.

Nadia pointed to the inside of the album cover. There was a copper plate with an inscription embossed at its center, the words twisting through the patina with swirling flourishes: To OUR FRIEND, with love, OTMA, Tsarskoye Selo.

“You see this?” Nadia said. “OTMA was the collective name for the four Romanov grand duchesses: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, all of whom were brutally murdered with the tsar and tsarina in 1917. Apparently the girls used to sign cards and letters with this collective name, and when their brother, Alexei, was young, he referred to his pack of older sisters as OTMA.” She paged through the album and pulled out a black-and-white photograph.

All four of the girls struck Bruno as remarkably beautiful, with their wide expressive eyes and white linen dresses, their pale complexions and curled hair. What a crime it was to have murdered such lovely creatures.

“Anyone who knows even the rudimentary facts about the Romanov family could tell you the meaning of OTMA,” Nadia continued, running her finger over the copper plate. “But understanding the nickname Our Friend is a bit more complicated.”

“Complicated by what?” Verlaine asked, his manner filled with impatience.

Bruno shot Verlaine a warning look—Cool off and let the woman speak—before turning back to Nadia. “Do you have any ideas about who Our Friend was?”

Nadia eyed them, cautious, and turned to Vera, who was studying the album with care. “It did not refer to just one person. The tsarina Alexandra used this moniker as a code name for her spiritual advisers. When writing to her husband, she never committed her guru’s name to paper but tried to mask him in order to avoid scandal. Alexandra used the name Our Friend for the first time with a man called Monsieur Philippe, who came into their life in 1897. He was a French mystic and charlatan who entranced the empress—Alexandra was a woman prone to mystical spells and esoteric beliefs—and he became a kind of court priest.”

“Like John Dee to Queen Elizabeth,” Vera said.

Bruno held Vera’s eye for a moment, impressed. John Dee was an obscure angelologist who had conducted some of the first angel summonings on record. He was starting to like Vera.

“John Dee was not a spiritual adviser so much as a court renaissance man,” Nadia said. “But that said, the analogy is appropriate. It was only one of the many similarities between the Russian and British royal families. They were intricately linked.”

“The tsarina was the granddaughter of Victoria and Albert of England,” Vera said. “The tsar Nikolai himself was the cousin of King George V of England on his mother’s side. And Nikolai’s father was Alexander III, a Romanov.”

“Exactly right,” Nadia said. “All of these branches of the imperial family had been heavily infiltrated by the Nephilim, and all of the children of these families—save a select few who by genetic fluke had human characteristics, the Grand Duke Michael II for example—were Nephilistic by birth. Their reproduction was watched with great interest by all of Europe’s angelologists, as the children of these families set the course of our work and, of course, history. The story of how Alexandra and Nikolai tried desperately to produce a son and heir to the throne is a common tale, one that can be found in any history book. They had daughter after daughter, each one beautiful and intelligent but considered a nonentity as far as the succession went: The Romanov daughters were unable to become regent.

“As royal governess to Alexandra’s daughters, my mother was given a window into a more hidden dimension to her household. The empress was a formidable creature who dominated Nikolai from the very beginning of their marriage. While Nikolai was weak—he had small white wings that resembled the unimpressive plumage of a goose—Alexandra was a particularly pure breed, like her grandmother. Her mauve wings were strong and full, with a span of over ten feet; her eyes were deep-set and steely blue; her will was indomitable. Alix, as she was called by her husband, was extremely proud of her inheritance and her gifts. She spent hours and hours grooming her great pink wings. She would use her leisure time teaching her daughters to fly in the private garden of their country estate in the Crimea. All of this is to say that she was an extremely determined woman. Alexandra would stop at nothing to create an heir.”

“And Our Friend was involved in all of this?” Bruno asked.

“In a word, yes,” Nadia said. “But not in the manner you are imagining. Monsieur Philippe’s primary attraction for the empress was the predictions about her future heir. He used prayer and a form of hypnosis to win her trust, and when she became pregnant, he told her that the child would be a boy. Alexandra announced her pregnancy and dismissed the court doctors. The whole of Russia waited. In the end, no child was delivered. It was kept quiet, but the servants and doctors gossiped that the tsarina had a phantom pregnancy: She had believed M. Philippe so strongly that her body produced all the symptoms of a normal gestation.

“But the biggest disappointment came years later. Another holy man, a seer and mystic like M. Philippe—with his knowledge of medicines and tinctures and potions—entered Alexandra’s life. That man came to be their closest adviser, her primary doctor, priest, and confidant. He, too, was referred to in many letters as Our Friend. This man eventually became notorious as the peasant who ruined the great Romanov dynasty and changed the course of the twentieth century.”

“Grigory Rasputin,” Vera said, her eyes bright with recognition.

Nadia turned to the first page of the album, where two Cyrillic words were scribbled in ink.

“Can you read it?” Verlaine asked.

“Of course,” Nadia said. “Your colleague is correct: It is the name Grigory Rasputin.”

Bruno took the album and looked at it more closely. “This album belonged to Rasputin?”

Nadia smiled, and Bruno knew their pathways had converged for a reason. “Rasputin was one of the most intriguing and, in my opinion, misunderstood men in the history of Russia. Father Grigory was the center of what we would now call a cult—he created a circle of largely upper-class female devotees, who gave him money, sex, social standing, and political power in exchange for his spiritual guidance. Rasputin came to St. Petersburg in 1903 and by 1905 had total access to the Empress Alexandra and, through her, to Nikolai and the children. Rumors have it that he seduced the tsarina, that he played sexual games with the grand duchesses, that he spent lavish amounts of state money for his own pleasure, and that he was actually ruling Russia during the crucial period of World War I, when the tsar left to command the military. All of these accusations were false, except for his influence on governmental policy. Alexandra believed Rasputin to have been sent by God. As such, she allowed him to choose state ministers from his friends. He duly filled the government with incompetents and sycophants, ensuring the Romanovs’ downfall. For the Russian people, Rasputin’s access to power was a mystery. They called him a magician, a hypnotist, a demon. He may have been all three, but the true reason for his power had little to do with magic or hypnotism. What the gossips of Moscow and Petersburg didn’t know about Father Grigory was that he was the only man who could keep the heir, Alexei, from dying of hemophilia.”

“The Romanovs found Rasputin to be an effective doctor?” Bruno asked.

“He wasn’t a doctor by training,” Nadia said. “There has been much speculation about what, exactly, he did specialize in. His power over Alexei certainly had much to do with a kind of medical treatment. Hemophilia was a deadly disorder at the beginning of the twentieth century. The disorder affected the blood vessels, which, when ruptured, could not heal, and thus the smallest bruise could lead to a hemophiliac’s death. Alexandra was a genetic carrier of the ‘bleeding disease,’ as it was called, inheriting it from her grandmother Queen Victoria. Women were carriers, but it only became manifest in men. Victoria’s sons and grandsons withered and died like cut flowers because of their inheritance. The tsarina felt horrible guilt over transmitting the disease to her son. She knew it to be a deadly disorder, requiring real medical care, and yet she trusted Rasputin, who was never trained as a doctor, to heal her son.”

“Why?” Bruno asked.

“That is at the heart of this album,” Nadia said. “He had methods that went beyond the perimeters of medicine. Of course, much of his power also stemmed from the force of his personality,” Nadia conceded. “He was a mystic, a holy man, a cunning and manipulative social climber, but there was—at the center of it all—an incredible mastery of human nature. Nothing he did was by chance. Later, once he had made the friendship of the tsarina, and had learned that his power over her would be absolute if he could heal her son, things changed. He needed an effective medicine for hemophilia, and he desperately tried to find one. I believe he saved Alexei with his formulas.”

Bruno glanced at the album. Nadia had opened it to a page filled with numbers.

“I have access to all of the records of the imperial treasures,” Vera said. “And I’ve never seen anything about this album.”

“It isn’t exactly common knowledge,” Naida said. “After the 1917 revolution, a committee was formed to make an official inquiry into Rasputin’s life, his influence on the tsar, and his murder. They interviewed people who knew him and collected firsthand accounts from his followers, patrons, friends, and enemies. A file was created about Rasputin. This file went missing during the Communist era—most people believed that it was burned with so many other tsarist-era documents.”

“I have colleagues who believe the burning of the imperial papers a crime against humanity, as egregious as Stalin’s purges,” Vera said.

Bruno shot Vera a look, wondering if she too believed the historical record more important than living, breathing human beings. It was this kind of thing that made Bruno feel allergic to academics.

“Perhaps your colleagues would be assuaged to learn, then, that the Rasputin file was spared,” Nadia said, her voice terse. She was clearly unhappy at the idea of papers being more valuable than human lives. “I was working in the Soviet archives in the eighties when I discovered it, buried in a room full of moldering surveillance records. It was not long after Angela Valko’s death. Vladimir had relocated to New York and I here to St. Petersburg—Leningrad at the time—where the tight restrictions on my existence felt like a salve to the wounds I had sustained during my work in Paris. So I took the file and, after copying everything, gave it to a friend, who smuggled it to France. It was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in Paris in 1996 and was purchased by a Russian historian. The original file is now in the hands of this man, who has made its contents public, even going so far as to create an investigative television series on Rasputin’s life.”

“You didn’t imagine that it could be important to our work?” Bruno asked, wondering how loyal Nadia was to the society.

“At that point I was finished with angelology,” Nadia replied. “I wanted nothing to do with this dead Russian mystic. I was not alone, of course. After Stalin came to power you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Moscow or Leningrad willing to talk about Rasputin and the tsar. But my reasons were far more personal than the sour aftertaste of history. It was Rasputin and his album that put Angela Valko in danger. The power of this man, and his reach beyond death, was too strong—even now I fear what could happen as a result of this album.”

“You believe that Rasputin is to blame for Angela Valko’s death?” Verlaine asked, incredulous.

“When my mother died, bequeathing the eggs and the album to me, I showed the pages of flowers to Vladimir, drawing his attention to Rasputin’s name. He knew it was extraordinary, and so together we took it to Angela. She believed that the album was the most surprising link between ancient and modern methods of fighting the Nephilim to be discovered in the twentieth century. In my presence—indeed, using me to translate the contents of Rasputin’s writings—she identified this volume as a kind of medical recipe book. She believed it to contain the most precious, most dangerous of chemical compounds—a formula from the ancient world. It could be a poison or, depending upon your point of view, a medicine.”

“Was it Angela who added this?” Vera asked, squinting as she pulled out the passage about Noah tucked in the leaves of the book.

“Indeed,” Nadia said. Taking it from Vera’s fingers, she read: “We instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from harming the sons of Noah.”

Bruno couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could Angela Valko really have interpreted a book full of pressed flowers in this way? The famous passage from Jubilees was considered to be one of the great textual conundrums surrounding Noah and the Flood. It posited that a medicine was capable of killing off the Nephilim, and that Noah created and used the medicine, but every first-year student of angelology knew that the Nephilim had survived the Flood. In fact, they continued to thrive in the postdiluvian world.

“Did Angela believe that Rasputin was trying to kill the Nephilim?”

“We all speculated about his motives. Vladimir believed he was from a Nephil family, and that this was why Alexandra trusted him. The name Grigory is a common one, often shortened to Grisha, a name popular among Russians. But there has been evidence that Rasputin’s mother had a hint of Nephilistic blood, and that she gave her son the name Grigory in homage to the great Grigori family, known throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. Rasputin’s physical strength, the hypnotic power of his blue eyes, as well as his reputed sexual domination of female devotees—these were all traits that would lead one to believe so, although this theory is difficult to prove, as his lineage is pure peasant stock. Even his surname had a vulgar connotation in Russian. It displeased the tsar so much that he officially changed Father Grigory’s family name to Novy, or ‘the new one.’”

“But even if Rasputin attempted to create such a quote-unquote medicine, he failed,” Bruno said. “The Nephilim still live.”

“You are right,” Nadia said. “Whatever his intentions and capabilities, he did not succeed. Nor did Angela. But you, with this album, might.”

Vera stood and, taking the album in her hands, said, “In my first years with the society I tried working with my fellow Russian angelologists. It was simply impossible. They are a territorial bunch, wary of new ideas and dismissive of research that doesn’t dovetail with their own. And so I turned to the only person I knew who could help me, an old family friend named Dr. Hristo Azov, an angelologist working on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. Soviets were allowed to travel to the Black Sea when I was a girl, and my family spent holidays there. Azov supported my early work. He is a brilliant man, and his research quite startling.”

“Do you think Azov would be interested in looking into this?” Bruno asked, realizing even as he spoke that Vera was two steps ahead of him.

“Of course,” Vera said. “Despite the distance, Azov has been a close contact for the past few years. He’s advised me in every aspect of my research. I’m sure I could arrange to see him immediately.” She looked at her watch. “It’s nearly lunchtime. If I start now, I could probably be there tonight.”

“You will report back the second you learn anything,” Bruno said.

“Of course,” Vera said, kissing each of them good-bye. She extricated herself from the situation so gracefully that Bruno had to admire her. If only he could get out of there with such skill.

Taking the album in hand, she looked to Nadia. “I’m sure that you don’t want to let this out of your sight, but Azov can’t help us unless he sees it.”

“You will take it then,” Nadia said, hesitant. “But you must be extremely careful. This album has been hidden for many years. If the Grigori know you have it, they will want it. And I believe you understand what they will do to get what they want.”

Vera looked momentarily concerned and then, finding a plastic bag in the corner, she slipped the album inside and walked into the labyrinth of Nadia’s home. Within seconds Bruno saw her through the dusty glass, hurrying along the street, her blond hair filled with midday sunlight.


The corner of Mokhovaya Street, St. Petersburg

The blow struck Verlaine before he’d fully stepped out into the street. The world seemed to waver and tip; he hit the cobblestones hard and rolled as the sharp wooden sole of a shoe sliced into his hand. A warm, wet substance dripped over his forehead and into his eye. He blinked, trying to clear his sight. He was blinded by blood.

In the seconds he lay on the cobblestones, he put together the facts of the ambush: The car they’d spotted at the Neva must have followed them. The creatures had waited outside the antique store, preparing to attack the moment he and Bruno stepped out of Nadia’s door. It had been planned and executed perfectly.

Wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, he saw that there was not one but two Nephilim. As he moved his gaze from one to the other, he realized that they were identical in every aspect, from their lush blond curls to their Italian leather shoes. The twins seemed eerily familiar to him. He recognized their build, their features, even the way they dressed. And yet it was impossible that he’d seen them in Paris. Nephilim rarely did their own dirty work.

He jumped to his feet and kicked at the closest twin, aiming for the solar plexus. He felt his shoe connect, but it had no effect. His target—it must be a Grigori, he realized; there was no other family that looked quite like them—simply smiled, as if Verlaine were nothing more threatening than an insect. Bruno fought, taking on the second Nephil, but it pinned him to the ground. Verlaine patted his jacket, feeling for the egg. For the moment, it was safe.

Then, quick as a flicker of light in the corner of his eye, he saw Eno. She stepped from the shadows, her skin translucent in the early afternoon light. Her wings were hidden under a sable cape, but he knew that if she were to open them, they would span the width of the street.

Time seemed to stop as Eno walked coolly to Verlaine and kicked him in the stomach. He tried to stand, but she pushed him back to the ground and, feeling his pockets, took his gun, which she looked at with disdain and threw aside. She paused and felt his jacket a second time. Verlaine knew even before she removed it that she’d found the egg. He struggled to grab it from her fingers, but the other two creatures held him down. Bruno jumped up, gun in his hand, and fired at Eno, who turned on her heel and ran. The twins climbed back into a car and drove off, disappearing as quickly as they’d attacked.

“Come on,” Bruno said, brushing himself off. “We’ll follow them.”

“We’ll be more efficient if we split up,” Verlaine said, spying Eno in the distance.

Bruno eyed him, wary. “Think you can handle her?”

“We’ll soon find out.” A moment of doubt came over Verlaine. Bruno had warned him that taking her on alone was suicide. Yet she was the kind of creature every angelologist dreamed of hunting. She would either be the biggest catch of his life, or she would kill him.

“Okay, move,” Bruno said. “Stay on her. She’ll know you’re following, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to put the pressure on. I’ll go after the car. They’re sure to meet up with Eno at some point.”

Verlaine picked up his gun, tucked it into his pocket, and ran, knowing he had to catch her, corner her, stun her, and restrain her, skills Bruno had drilled into him year after year. Verlaine had done it time and time again, first on the Golobium, working his way up to the Gibborim, and then, finally, to the Nephilim. He had learned to match the pace of the creature, choose the precise moment to reveal his presence, and then, when he had maneuvered it into position, capture it. And yet he had never tasted the sweetness of a creature like Eno.

She turned onto Nevsky Prospect, a wide thoroughfare lined with boutiques and galleries, and ducked into a shop, its polished window filled with leather luggage, scarves, and handbags. Pausing outside the door, he wondered if he should go in after her or wait. Neither choice presented itself as a good option. She knew he was following her. If he went inside, she’d run. If he stood outside, she might find a way to escape through another exit. Verlaine leaned on the glass and squinted. Beautiful, well-dressed women filled the shop. Eno stood at a glass display filled with wallets and accessories. She dialed a number and brought her phone to her ear, all the while examining the pattern of a silk scarf—a white foulard with black flecks that matched, as she tied it around her neck, her white beret, and black cape. After a few minutes she turned off the phone, slid it into her bag, paid for the scarf, and walked back out onto the street. Verlaine hid and watched her walk away.

If Eno had detected Verlaine, she didn’t alter her behavior in the least. She stepped off Nevsky Prospect, toward the Neva, her pace quickening. Verlaine increased his speed, his determination to catch her growing stronger each second. Her stiletto heels made her seem enormous among the human beings around her. He walked faster and faster, until finally he broke into a run, the cool wind blowing through his hair. It was not a question of whether he could catch her—he was determined to apprehend her no matter what it took. Rather it was a question of how far she would go to evade him. If he knew anything at all about the Emim, he knew that Eno would keep going.

Even as he followed her, something in him pulled back. He saw himself at a remove, as if he were outside of the scene, looking on his movements from high above the city: a man in a bloodstained yellow sport coat pushing his way along the crowded bridge over the river, dodging traffic as he crossed the street at the Hermitage.

Verlaine glanced at the great block of the Winter Palace rising before him once again. The buildings seemed even more massive in the afternoon sunlight than they had when he’d arrived before dawn. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he’d held out the egg, unaware that it was more than an ornate bauble.

When Eno turned down a tree-lined side street, Verlaine saw his opening. Although the labyrinthine ancient quarter behind the Winter Palace wasn’t as sheltered as he would have liked—not a dark alley or an enclosed courtyard or a deserted tunnel in a subway station—it would have to do. He didn’t have much time to make his move. If he was going to get her, it had to be now.

As if sensing his intention, Eno increased her pace. He matched her gait, gaining on her from behind, his entire body tingling with anticipation. After all of the years of tracking angels, he still found the hunt exhilarating and terrifying. Eno’s effect upon him—the mixture of fear and disbelief that left him jittery and anxious—was similar to what he’d felt the first time he had chased a creature, years before. He moved closer and closer, until he was dangerously, recklessly near her, so close that he could smell her thick scent—a musky smell that marked her kind. He’d first heard the scent described as ambroisal—it is in some of the earliest recorded descriptions of the creatures—but to Verlaine it was a rotten odor, like a decaying animal, an odor that distinguished the lesser breeds from the more refined scent of the Nephilim. He felt the air chill between them and he grew tense, overwhelmed by the proximity. Her pale skin glowed; her features were sharp, aquiline. When she looked over her shoulder, he saw that her eyes were amber, more golden than anything in the natural world. The very traits that painters had used to represent angels from the Renaissance onward were imprinted upon her face: She had wide symmetric eyes, a broad forehead, and high cheekbones, the characteristics that had come to be the hallmark of angelic beauty. It was no mystery why angel hunters kept chasing her. Eno was ravishing.

As they rounded a corner, Eno stopped and faced Verlaine. Her golden eyes rested on his, challenging him to come closer. A delicate white membrane had fallen over her eyes, creating a milky sheath, like the eyes of a reptile. She blinked and the film retracted. For a terrifying moment he felt that she would kiss him. A shiver of electricity passed through him, a kind of recognition that Verlaine didn’t want to admit feeling, but the truth of it hit him squarely in the chest: Eno was one of the most frightening, most seductive creatures he’d ever seen.

He needed to hit her just hard enough to stun her, so he could get a cuff around her neck. He touched his back pocket, making sure the device was where he always kept it—it was so thin and flexible that it rolled up to the size of a coin—and then grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back hard and kicking her feet out from under her. She landed on the sidewalk, hitting the pavement, her bag falling at her side. Verlaine grabbed it, threw it from her reach, and dug his knee into her chest, pinning her to the concrete. He’d knocked the breath out of her—he could hear her gasp as she struggled to breathe. Verlaine held her wrists together with one hand and grabbed the collar from his back pocket with the other. But as he pressed the metal to her neck, she pushed him away with such ease, twisted from under him and jumped to her feet, a smile changing her icy features to the radiant beauty of a Botticelli. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Verlaine lunged, landing a blow to her stomach. She countered by dragging her fingernails across his face, then swept his legs out from under him. In a blur of movement, he hit the sidewalk. He heard the sharp sound of Eno’s boots tapping against the cobblestones as she fled.

He jumped up and started after her. She was fast, but Verlaine kept pace with her until she opened her wings. They glistened, vibrating with energy. She lifted off the ground and flew through the streets, gaining speed with each passing second.

Verlaine looked around for something that might help him catch her. There was a rusty Zid motorcycle parked nearby, its wires hanging loose. The engine was vastly different from his Ducati, but in a matter of seconds, he’d hot-wired the bike, thrown his leg over the leather seat, and was speeding after Eno. He held tight to the bars as he swerved through streets and turned back onto the wide boulevard. He tried to get his bearings. He was driving west, toward the Neva. A minaret rose against the purple sky.

A dull, throbbing pain seeped through his skull. The cut had scabbed over and, when he turned his head, he felt it break open. Warm, fresh blood seeped across his skin.

Suddenly, Verlaine saw Bruno up ahead in the backseat of a taxi. He was follwing the twins, trailing their sedan, gaining momentum by the second. Verlaine could see that he was close enough to assist Bruno and, with the right balance of velocity and control, could cut the twins off. Glancing up, he saw Eno, her black wings stretched against the sky. She was guarding the twins from above. If Verlaine went after the taxi, it would draw her down so that he could fight her.

A rumbling caught Verlaine’s attention. He turned and found a pack of black MV Agusta motorcycles behind him, moving in formation. Bruno leaned out of the the taxi’s window, gave a quick wave of his hand, and the Agustas swarmed the twins’ sedan, their motors buzzing as they swerved in and out of its path.

The sedan spun around, screeching to a halt, and Bruno’s taxi followed. Verlaine pulled over and dropped the motorcycle.

“Nice timing,” Bruno said, looking Verlaine over and giving a low whistle. Verlaine must have looked as bad as he felt. He’d be black and blue, no doubt, with his head stitched together like a football. As he stepped toward Bruno, he realized that the bump to his head was making him unsure on his feet.

The pack of Russian angelologists dismounted their motorcycles and flanked Bruno and Verlaine. He’d never met their colleagues in Russia, but he’d heard about them often, mostly in jokes about their use of heavy gear. They wore black gloves with steel knuckles embedded in the leather and black steel helmets with angel wings painted in silver on the sides. He counted nine Russian angel hunters, giving them a total of eleven angelologists. Under normal circumstances the numbers would have been more than sufficient. But it was clear after his encounter with Eno that this wasn’t an average hunt, and Eno and the twins weren’t average targets.

Just when Verlaine was beginning to feel confident that they could handle the situation, a new creature jumped from the twins’ sedan. It was one of the Raiphim, an angelic order indigenous to Russia. From the lexicon of angels Verlaine owned, he knew that the Raiphim were phoenixlike monsters who rose again and again from the dead. They were known as “the dead ones” for their pale pink eyes and their ability to return to their bodies after death. He had never seen one up close. He found them ghoulish, their pallor that of bloodless flesh.

Verlaine blinked as the passenger side door opened and a second Raiphim emerged. One of the Russian hunters ran at the first creature, aimed, and kicked, trying for the chest. A second hunter stunned it from behind. The beast collapsed onto the pavement, gasping for breath, as a third angel hunter leaped onto the felled creature and slapped a collar around its neck.

“Easy does it,” Bruno called. “They come back stronger and meaner if you kill them.”

Verlaine saw, from the corner of his eye, that the Russians had cornered the second Raiphim. A hunter lunged forward and grabbed one of its stalky wings. The creature struggled and fell backward, its wings whipping through the air. In the frenzy, it sliced a gash across the exposed skin below the hunter’s motorcycle helmet. He gasped and fell to the pavement, holding a gloved hand to the wound. The creature moved in, sensing weakness, and—just as he was about to come down on the wounded man—Verlaine stepped between them, trying to hold him off. The monster struck Verlaine and his mouth filled with fresh blood. He spit, trying to clear the taste. The creature was coming at him a second time when one of the Russian hunters slapped a collar around its neck. As if a switch had been flipped, the angel fell to the ground, its wings folding under it.

The twins stood at the center of the road, watching the fight with cool detachment. They were exact replicas of Percival Grigori—not the decrepit Percival Verlaine had known in New York City ten years before but the young and healthy Percival from Angela Valko’s film. He studied them, perplexed, wondering who they were and how it had happened that there was no record of them anywhere. According to Bruno—and to the rest of the hunters who relied on profiling—if a creature didn’t exist in their database, it didn’t exist at all.

Whoever these Nephilim were, Eno was serving them. She stepped forward, protecting them, her wings outstretched. The twins allowed her to shield them, standing at a remove, watching the angel hunters with growing alarm.

“They’re looking for something,” Bruno said, scanning the crowd.

Verlaine glanced over the plaza, hoping to find a backup team of angelologists ready to fight. They were at the very heart of St. Petersburg, across from the Hermitage, a location that complicated matters. There would be police there any minute, and Verlaine couldn’t be sure that they would be friendly. The sky began to glow pink with twilight in the background, smoky and dim. Lights around the square were coming on, throwing a pale, eerie glow over the Winter Palace, its stone creamy as white chocolate.

Bruno was right: Eno was looking for something. Wiping blood from his eyes, Verlaine tried to anticipate what she would do next. If she were waiting for other Emim, it would be next to impossible to fight them. If they hoped to find Evangeline, they would need to take Eno down carefully, without killing her. They approached in tandem, one man on each side, Verlaine centering his attention on Eno.

“If you manage to get the egg,” Bruno whispered, “get on the motorcycle and get the hell out of here. Don’t stay to help and don’t look back.”

Motioning for the hunters to follow him, Verlaine closed in. When Eno didn’t back away, Verlaine made a grab for the egg, hazarding a guess that it was in a pocket of her cape, and hit the jackpot. He scooped it up, feeling its cold weight in his hand, and made his way toward his motorcycle. As he threw his leg over the bike, he felt a cold shadow fall over him, an icy sensation that penetrated his clothes and chilled him to the bone. Suddenly, quick as a viper striking its prey, Eno pulled him to the ground. He pulled his gun from his belt, aiming it at her chest and—although she was moving and he couldn’t be certain of his shot—pulling the trigger. A burst of electricity knocked the gun from his hands, eliminating all hope for a second shot, but he could tell from the strength of the surge that he wouldn’t need one.

He had stunned her. She clasped her arms over her chest, moaning in pain. A female angel hunter—Verlaine guessed her to be one of their elite by the skillful way she reacted—threw him a collar. Verlaine opened it and went for Eno’s neck. He had been trained to act quickly, to disarm while the creature was stunned, to lock the collar in one strong gesture. Once it was in place, the angel would sink into a state of drowsy submission, allowing the angelologist to take it into custody with ease. Verlaine followed this procedure perfectly. Yet, as he moved to secure the collar, Eno struck back. He fell, knocking the wind from his lungs. The collar slid from his hands, skittering across the pavement. Verlaine couldn’t breathe. He was paralyzed.

In a violent strike, Eno pinned Verlaine to the ground, pressing the stiletto of her boot into the curve of his neck, as if to puncture his throat. She knelt over him, placing her hands over his chest, her wrists meeting above his heart. A shock of electricity moved through him, and a low, grating sound filled Verlaine’s hearing. It wasn’t a sound he recognized, and it was impossible to tell if the noise was something generated in his own mind—the mental clatter of terror ringing in his ears—or if Eno was causing this bizarre music to move through him. Although he had studied the Nephilim’s use of vibration to stun human victims—it was one of their many tactics to derange the senses before a kill—Verlaine had never heard of an Emim angel having the power to do so.

Verlaine struggled, pushing against her, feeling her wings take hold of him as she pressed her hands harder onto his chest. He could feel a sharp, vibrating pulse pounding over the beating of his heart. He had seen the victims of angelic electroattacks. Their bodies were charred to black cinders. A wave of fear and panic struck him. Eno was going to kill him.

Heat slithered over his skin, as if he had fallen into a pit of boiling oil. He might have screamed—he heard his voice in his ears, but had no sensation of using it. Somewhere in the distance there were footfalls, gunshots, the echo of Bruno’s voice. A brilliance subsumed him, and in a burst of heat, the strength of which overwhelmed his body and mind, Verlaine lost consciousness.