St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
Evangeline and Celestine rode the elevator to the fourth floor, the strap of the leather case already weighing upon Evangeline’s shoulder. When the doors opened, the old nun stopped her. “Go, my dear,” she said. “I will distract the others so that you may exit unnoticed.” Evangeline kissed Celestine’s cheek and left her in the elevator. The moment Evangeline walked away, Celestine pushed a button and the doors swept closed. Evangeline was alone.
Upon reaching her bedroom cell, Evangeline tore open the drawers and collected the objects of value to her—a rosary and a small amount of cash she had saved over the years—which she put in her pocket. Her heart ached as she glanced around her room. Not long before, she’d believed she would never leave it. She’d imagined that life stretched before her in an endless progression of ritual, routine, and prayer. She would wake each morning to pray, and she would go to sleep each evening in a room looking out upon the dark presence of the river. Overnight these certainties had melted, dissolving like ice in the Hudson’s current.
Evangeline’s thoughts were interrupted by a great cacophony of rumbling from the courtyard. She ran from her room, threw open a window, and looked over the grounds as a procession of black utility vans pulled into the horseshoe driveway curling before Maria Angelorum. The van doors slid open, and a group of strange creatures climbed out onto the convent lawn. Squinting, Evangeline tried to see them more clearly. They wore uniform black overcoats that brushed the snow as they walked, black leather gloves, and military-style combat boots. As they moved across the courtyard, coming closer to the convent, she observed that their number quickly multiplied—more and more arrived, as if they had the ability to appear from the chill air. As she examined the periphery of the convent grounds, she saw the creatures step from the darkened forest, climb the stone wall, and walk through the great iron gate at the drive. They might have been waiting, hidden, for hours. St. Rose Convent was completely surrounded by Gibborim.
Clutching the leather case close, Evangeline turned from the window in fright and ran through the hallway, knocking on doors, rousing the sisters from study and prayers. She turned the lights to full brightness, a harsh illumination that ripped away the air of coziness of the fourth floor and exposed the tattered carpeting, the peeling paint, the dreary uniformity of their enclosed lives. If there was one thing to be learned from the previous attack, it was that the sisters must leave the convent immediately.
Evangeline’s efforts brought the Elder Sisters from their rooms. They stood throughout the corridor, looking about in utter confusion, their unveiled hair in disarray. Evangeline heard Philomena calling from somewhere in the distance, preparing the sisters to fight.
“Go,” Evangeline said. “Take the back stairwell to the first floor and follow Mother Perpetua’s orders. Trust me. You will soon understand.”
Resisting the urge to lead them down herself, Evangeline pushed through the clusters of women, and, making her way to the wooden door at the end of the hall, she opened it and ran up the winding steps. The room at the top of the turret was freezing cold and shadowy. She knelt before the brick wall and pried the stone from her hiding place. In the recess in the wall, she found the metal box containing the angelological journal, the photograph tucked safely inside. She turned to the last quarter of the notebook. Her mother’s scientific notes were there, copied out in Gabriella’s clean, precise script. Her mother had died for these strings of numbers. Evangeline could not lose them.
The turret windows had frozen over, creating blue-white fractals upon the glass. Evangeline attempted to clear a circle in the ice with her breath, rubbing the pane with the palm of her hand, but the glass remained foggy. In a panic to see the grounds, she removed her shoe and shattered the window with the heel, swiping the barbs of glass from the frame with quick sweeps, opening a small vantage over the courtyard.
Bitterly cold air gushed into the turret. She could see the river and the forest below, framing the courtyard on three sides. The creatures had collected at the center of the grounds, a mass of dark-cloaked figures. Even at a distance, their height foreshortened, they sent a chill through Evangeline. There were fifty, perhaps a hundred of the creatures below her window, quickly composing themselves into rows.
Suddenly, as if responding to a command, they shed their great cloaks in unison. The creatures’ limbs were bare, their skin throwing halos of radiance over the snow. When they stood upright, their immense height gave them the appearance of Grecian statues stationed on a desolate mall. Great, sharp-edged red wings opened on their backs, striated feathers glistening in the dull morning sunlight. In an instant she recognized the creatures, for she was gazing on beasts similar to those angelic beings she had observed in the warehouse in New York City with her father. Only in the years since she’d last set eyes on such a creature, she had grown from a girl to a woman, a change that rendered her sensitive to a seduction she hadn’t experienced before. Their bodies were exceedingly lovely, so sensuous that a shock of longing passed through her. Yet even through the haze of her desire, Evangeline found that everything about them—from the way they stood to the immense span of their wings—struck her as monstrous.
Taking a deep breath to calm her thoughts she noticed a peculiar scent. Loamy and carbon-rich, it was the distinct scent of smoke. Searching the grounds she observed a group of the creatures huddled together beside the convent, fanning flames with their wings. The flickering fire rose higher and higher. The devils were attacking.
Evangeline tucked the angelology journal into the leather case and ran down the turret steps, taking the direct passage to the Adoration Chapel. The smell of fire grew more distinct as she descended, and thick drafts of smoke swirled up through the stairwell. There was no sure way to know how far the fire had blazed and, realizing she might be trapped, she quickened her pace, the leather case clutched tight beneath her arm. The air thickened as she ran down the successive flights of stairs, confirming her belief that the fire was—at least for the moment—contained in the lower regions of the convent. Even so, it seemed impossible that the flames had risen so quickly and with such force. She recalled the creatures standing before the fire, their powerful wings beating, encouraging the flames to mount. She shuddered. The Gibborim would not stop until the entire convent lay in ashes.