Angelology

The Grigori penthouse, Upper East Side, New York City
December 24, 1999, 12:41 P.M.

Percival stood in his mother’s bedroom, a spare, meticulously white space at the very apex of the penthouse. A wall of glass overlooked the city, a gray mirage of buildings punctuated by the blue sky. The afternoon sun slid along a series of Gustave Doré etchings on the far wall, gifts to Sneja from Percival’s father many years before. The etchings depicted legions of angels basking in sunlight, tier upon tier of winged messengers arranged in rings, images magnified by the ethereal cast of the room. Once Percival had felt kinship to the angels in the pictures. Now, in his present condition, he could hardly bring himself to look at them.
Sneja lay sprawled upon her bed, sleeping. In her slumber—her wings retracted into a smooth skin upon her back—she looked like an innocent and well-fed child. Percival placed his hand upon her shoulder, and when he said her name, she opened her eyes and fixed him in her gaze. The aura of peacefulness that had surrounded her drained away. She sat up in bed, unfurled her wings, and arrayed them about her shoulders. They were perfectly groomed, the layers of colored feathers meticulously ordered, as if she’d had them cleaned before going to sleep.
“What do you want?” Sneja said, looking Percival up and down as if to take in the full scale of his disappointing appearance. “What has happened? You look terrible.”
Trying to remain calm, Percival said, “I must speak with you.”
Sneja threw her feet over the edge of her bed, hoisted herself up, and walked to the window. It was early afternoon. In the waning light, her wings seemed glossed in mother-of-pearl. “I should think it obvious that I’m taking a nap.”
“I wouldn’t disturb you if it were not urgent,” Percival said.
“Where is Otterley?” Sneja said, glancing over Percival’s shoulder. “Has she returned from the recovery effort? I am anxious to hear the details. We haven’t employed Gibborim in so very long.” She looked at Percival, and he saw at once how worried she was. “I should have gone myself,” she said, her eyes glistening. “The blaze of the fires, the rush of wings, the screams of the unsuspecting—it is like the old days.”
Percival bit his lip, unsure of how to respond.
“Your father is in from London,” Sneja said, wrapping herself in a long silk kimono. Her wings—healthy and immaterial as Percival’s had once been—slipped effortlessly through the fabric. “Come, we will catch him at during his lunch.”
Percival walked with his mother to the dining room, where Mr. Percival Grigori II, a middling Nephilim of some four hundred years who bore a striking resemblance to his son, sat at the table. He had taken his jacket off and allowed his wings to emerge through his oxford. As a schoolboy often in trouble, Percival had frequently found his father waiting for him in his study, his wings pointed nervously in this very same manner. Mr. Grigori was a strict, ill-tempered, cold, and ruthlessly aggressive man, whose wings echoed his temperament: They were austere and narrow appendages with dull silver feathers the color of fish scales that lacked the proper width or span. In fact, his father’s wings were the exact opposite of Sneja’s. Percival found it appropriate that their physical appearances should be so opposite. His parents had not lived together in nearly one hundred years.
Mr. Grigori tapped a World War II—era Meisterstück fountain pen against the table’s surface, another sign of impatience and irritation that Percival recognized from his childhood. Looking at Percival, he said, “Where have you been? We have been waiting for word from you all day.”
Sneja arranged her wings about her and sat at the table. Turning to Percival, she said, “Yes, my darling, tell us—what news from the convent?”
Percival fell into a chair at the head of the table, set his cane at his side, and took a deep, labored breath. His hands trembled. He felt both hot and cold at once. His clothes were soaked through with sweat. Each breath burned his lungs, as if the air fueled a kindling fire. He was slowly suffocating.
“Calm yourself, son,” Mr. Grigori said, looking at Percival with contempt.
“He’s ill,” Sneja snapped, putting her fat hand on her son’s arm. “Take your time, dearest. Tell us what has put you in such a state.”
Percival could see his father’s disappointment and his mother’s growing helplessness. He did not know how he would gather the strength to speak of the disaster that had befallen them. Sneja had ignored his phone calls all morning. He had tried her many times during the lonely drive back to the city and she had simply refused to pick up. He would have much preferred to tell her the news on the phone.
At last Percival said, “The mission was unsuccessful.”
Sneja paused, understanding from the tone of her son’s voice that there was more bad news. “But that is impossible,” she said.
“I have just come from the convent,” Percival said. “I have seen it with my own eyes. We have suffered a terrible defeat.”
“What of the Gibborim?” Mr. Grigori said.
“Gone,” Percival said.
“Retreated?” Sneja asked.
“Killed,” Percival said.
“Impossible,” Mr. Grigori said. “We sent nearly one hundred of our strongest warriors.”
“And each one was struck down,” Percival said. “They were instantly killed. I walked through the aftermath and saw their bodies. Not one Gibborim lived.”
“This is unthinkable,” Mr. Grigori said. “Such a defeat has not occurred in my lifetime.”
“It was an unnatural defeat,” Percival said.
“Are you saying that there was a summoning?” Sneja asked, incredulous.
Percival folded his hands upon the table, relieved that he had stopped trembling. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible. There are not many angelologists alive who have been initiated into the art of summoning, especially in America, where they are at a loss for mentorship. But it is the only explanation for such complete destruction.”
“What does Otterley say about this?” Sneja asked, pushing away her chair and standing. “Surely she doesn’t believe that they have the strength to perform a summoning. The practice is all but extinct.”
“Mother,” Percival said, his voice strained with emotion, “we lost everyone in the attack.”
Sneja looked from Percival to her husband, as if only his reaction would make her son’s words true.
Percival’s voice faltered in shame and despair as he continued, “I was at a distance from the convent when the attack occurred, but I could see the terrible whirlwind of angels. They descended upon the Gibborim. Otterley was among their number.”
“You saw her body?” Sneja said, walking from one end of the room to the other. Her wings had pressed closed against her body, an involuntary physical reaction. “You are certain?”
“There is no doubt,” Percival said. “I watched the humans dispose of the bodies.”
“And what of the treasure?” Sneja said, growing frantic. “What of your trusted employee? What of Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko? Tell me you have gained something from our losses?”
“By the time I arrived, they were gone,” Percival said. “Gabriella’s Porsche was abandoned at the convent. They took what they came for and left. It is over. There is no hope.”
“So let me get this straight,” Mr. Grigori said. Although Percival knew that his father adored Otterley, and must be in a state of unspeakable dispair, he displayed the icy calm that had so frightened Percival in his youth. “You allowed your sister to go into attack alone. Then you let the angelologists who killed her escape, losing the opportunity to retrieve a treasure we have sought for a thousand years. And you believe that you are finished?”
Percival regarded his father with hatred and yearning. How was it that he had not lost his strength with age and that Percival, who should be at the height of his powers, had become so weakened?
“You will pursue them,” Mr. Grigori said, standing to his full height, his silver wings fanning open about his shoulders. “You will find them and retrieve the instrument. And you will keep me informed as the hunt progresses. We will do whatever necessary to bring victory.”