St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
Verlaine could hardly make out the words ST. ROSE fashioned into the ornate wrought-iron gate, so dense was the smoke coming from the convent. Alongside the thick limestone wall sat his bludgeoned Renault, its windows smashed. It had most likely filled with snow and ice overnight, but it remained parked where he had left it. The gate to the convent was open, and as they parked the car, Verlaine saw a line of black utility vans lined up one behind the other before the church.
“Do you see that car?” Gabriella asked, pointing to a white Jaguar hidden in foliage at the end of the convent driveway. “It belongs to Otterley Grigori.”
“Related to Percival?”
“His sister,” Gabriella said. “I had the great pleasure of knowing her in France.” Gabriella took the gun in her hand and stepped out of the Porsche. “If she is here, we can presume that Percival is here as well and that the two of them are behind this blaze.”
Verlaine looked beyond Gabriella to the convent a short distance away. Smoke obscured the upper regions of the structure and, although he saw movement on the ground, he was too far away to make out what was happening. He stepped out of the car, following Gabriella toward the convent.
“What are you doing?” she asked, eyeing him skeptically.
“I’m going with you.”
“I need to know you’re here waiting with the car. When I find Evangeline, we will need to leave very quickly. I’m depending upon you to make sure that will happen. Promise me you’ll stay here.” Without waiting for a response, Gabriella started off toward the convent, tucking the gun into a pocket of her long black jacket.
Verlaine leaned against one of the vans, watching Gabriella disappear around the side of the convent. He was tempted to follow her despite her instructions. Instead he walked through the rows of utility vans to the white Jaguar. Cupping his hands over his eyes, he peered through the window.
On the beige leather seat sat a folder of his research, the photocopied picture of the Thracian coin on top. He tried to open the door and, finding it locked, looked around for something to break it with. Just then he saw Percival Grigori at the side of the road, making his way toward the car.
Quickly, Verlaine ducked behind the stone wall that surrounded the convent grounds. Moving ever closer to the convent, his sneakers crunching in the ice-crusted snow, he stopped at a gap in the structure that gave onto the main lawn. He was astonished by the scene before him. Thick, dark smoke hovered above a raging fire; sheets of flames fell over the convent. Much to his amazement, an army of creatures—identical to the ones he had killed with Gabriella—swarmed over the convent grounds, perhaps a hundred winged, reptilian monsters gathered together in attack.
He strained to see the scene more clearly. The beings were a hybrid of bird and beast, part human, part monster in equal measure. Wings were mounted upon their backs, lush and red. They were shrouded in a light so intense it covered them in a gauze of illumination. Although Gabriella had explained the Gibborim to him in great detail and he had recognized them as the same beings as had seen on the train the night before, he now realized that he had not, until this very moment, believed that so many of them existed.
Through the flames and smoke, Verlaine spied more and more clusters of Gibborim. One by one they swooped upon the convent, their great wings beating hard and furious. They lifted high and buoyant in the wind, airy as kites drifting down on the building. They appeared impossibly light, as if their bodies were insubstantial. Their movements were so coordinated, so powerful that Verlaine understood at once they would be impossible to defeat. The creatures flew in an elaborate ballet of attack, rising from the ground in an elegant orchestration of violence, one creature weaving past the other as the flames soared upward. Verlaine watched the destruction in awe.
One creature stood at a remove from the others, at the edge of the forest. Determined to examine it, Verlaine ducked into the thick foliage beyond the stone wall, moving closer to the being until he was less than ten feet away from it, hidden in bushes. He saw the elegance of its features—aquiline nose, golden curls, the terrifying red eyes. He breathed deeply, taking in the sweet aroma of its body—Gabriella had told him that the scent was called ambrosial by those who had the fortune (or misfortune) to encounter it. He was aware at once of the dangerous allure the creature held. Verlaine had imagined them to be hideous, the misbegotten children of a grand historical error, malformed hybrids of the sacred and the profane. He had not considered that he would find them beautiful.
Suddenly the creature turned. In a sweeping motion he glanced toward the forest, as if perceiving Verlaine’s presence among the evergreens. The Gibborim’s quick movement revealed a flash of skin at the neck, a long, thin arm, the outline of its body. As the giant moved toward the stone wall, its red wings shivering about him, Verlaine lost all sense of why he had come, what he wanted, and what he would do next. He knew he should be afraid, but as the Gibborim stepped closer, his skin casting a glow on the ground, Verlaine felt an eerie calm come over him. The harsh, scintillating light of the fire raged, throwing a glow upon the creature, mixing with its native luminescence. Verlaine stood hypnotized. Rather than run, as he knew he should, he wanted to draw closer to the creature, to touch the stark, pale body. He stepped from the safety of the forest and stood before the Gibborim, as if to give himself over. He gazed into its glassy eyes, as if searching for an answer to a dark and violent riddle.
What Verlaine found there startled him beyond reckoning. Instead of malevolence, the creature’s gaze contained a frightening animal vapidity, a vacuity that was neither vicious nor benign. It was as if the creature lacked the ability to comprehend what lay before it. Its eyes were lenses into a pure emptiness. The being did not register Verlaine’s presence. Rather it looked beyond, as if he were nothing more than an element of the forest, a tree stump or a clump of leaves. Verlaine understood that he was in the presence of a creature with no soul.
In a swift movement, it opened its red wings. Rotating one wing and then the other so that the fire’s harsh glare slid over them, the monster gathered its strength and leaped from the ground, light and airy as a butterfly, joining the others in the attack.