The fantasy allowed him to recall the blind fury Gabriella’s betrayal had caused him. The two of them had planned the theft of the Rhodope treasure together. Their plan had been precisely calibrated and, to Percival’s mind, brilliant. Their relationship had been one of passion, but also of mutual advantage. Gabriella had brought him information about angelological work—detailed reports on the holdings and whereabouts of angelologists—and Percival gave Gabriella information that allowed her to advance through the hierarchy of the society with ease. Their business interactions—there could be no other word for these worldly exchanges—had only served to make him admire Gabriella. Her hunger to succeed made her all the more precious to him.
With Gabriella’s guidance the Grigori family learned of the Second Angelological Expedition. Their plan had been brilliant. Percival and Gabriella had set up the abduction of Seraphina Valko together, designating the route the caravan would take through Paris, making certain that the leather case remained in Gabriella’s hands. They had wagered that a trade—releasing the angelologists in exchange for the case containing the treasure—would be instantly approved by the Angelological Council. Dr. Seraphina Valko was not only an angelologist of world renown, she was the wife of the council leader, Raphael Valko. There was no possibility that the council would let her die, no matter how precious the object in question. Gabriella had assured him that their plan would work. He had believed her. Yet it soon became clear that something had gone terribly wrong. When he realized that there would be no trade, Percival killed Seraphina Valko himself. She had died in silence, although they’d done all they could to encourage her to divulge information about the object she’d recovered. But worst of all, Gabriella had betrayed him.
The night she had given him the leather case containing the lyre he would have married her. He would have brought her into their circle, even against the objections of his parents, who long suspected that she was a spy working to infiltrate the Grigori family. Percival had defended her. But when his mother had taken the lyre to be examined by a German specialist in the history of musical instruments, a man often called upon to verify Nazi treasures, they found that the lyre was nothing more than a well-rendered replica, an ancient Syrian specimen made of cattle bone. Gabriella had lied to him. He had been humiliated and ridiculed for his faith in Gabriella, whom Sneja had never trusted.
After the betrayal he’d washed his hands of Gabriella, leaving her to the others, a decision he found painful. He learned sometime later that her punishment had been exceptionally severe. It had been his intention that she die—indeed, he had instructed that she be killed rather than tortured—but through some combination of luck and extraordinary planning on the part of her colleagues she had been rescued. She recovered and went on to marry Raphael Valko, a match that assisted her career advancement. Percival would be the first to admit that Gabriella was the best in her field, one of the few angelologists to fully penetrate their world.
In reality he had not spoken to Gabriella for more than fifty years. Like the others, she had been kept under continual surveillance, her professional and personal activities monitored at all times of the day and night. He knew that she was living in New York City and that she continued her work against him and his family. But Percival knew very little about the details of her personal life. After their affair his family had made sure that all information about Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko be kept from him.
The last he’d heard, Gabriella was still struggling against the inevitable decline of angelology, fighting against the hopelessness of their cause. He imagined that she would be old now, her face still beautiful but fallen. She would look nothing at all like the frivolous, silly young woman now sitting across from him. Percival leaned back in his chair and examined the woman—her ridiculously low-cut blouse and her uncouth jewelry. She had become drunk—in fact, she had more than likely been so even before he’d ordered the champagne. The tawdry woman before him was nothing at all like Gabriella.
“Come with me,” Percival said, throwing a stack of bills on the table. He put on his overcoat, took up his cane, and walked out into the night, his arm about the young woman. She was tall and thin, larger-boned than Gabriella. Percival could feel the pure sexual attraction between them—since the beginning it had been thus, human women falling prey to angelic charm.
This one was no different from the others. She went along with Percival willingly, and for some blocks they walked in silence until, finding a secluded alley, he took her by the hand and led her into the shadows. The unbearable, almost animal desire he felt for her fueled his anger. He kissed her, made love to her, and then, in a rage, he encircled her delicate, warm throat with his long, cold fingers and pressed the bones until they began to snap. The young woman grunted and pushed him away, struggling to free herself from his grip, but it was too late: Percival Grigori was caught up in the kill. The ecstasy of her pain, the sheer bliss of her struggle, sent shudders of desire through him. Imagining that it was Gabriella in his grasp only made the pleasure more acute.
St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
E
vangeline woke at three in the morning in a panic. After years of abiding a rigorously strict routine, she had the tendency to become disoriented when she deviated from her schedule. Glancing about her room and feeling the pull of sleep weighing upon her senses, she decided that what she saw was not her chamber at all but a small, orderly room with immaculate windowpanes and dusted shelves that existed in a dream, and she went back to sleep.
The fleeting image of her mother and father appeared before her. They stood together in the apartment in Paris, her childhood home. In the dream her father was young and handsome, happier than Evangeline had seen him after her mother’s death. Her mother—even in the midst of dreaming, Evangeline struggled to see her—stood in the distance, a shadowy figure, her face obscured by a sun hat. Evangeline reached for her, desperate to touch her mother’s hand. From the depths of her dream, she called for her mother to come closer. But as she strained to be near to her, Angela receded, dissolving like a diaphanous, insubstantial fog.
Evangeline woke for a second time, startled by the intensity of the dream. The bright red light of her alarm clock illuminated three numbers—4:55. A shot of electricity sparked through her: She was about to be late for her scheduled hour of adoration. As she blinked and looked about the room, she realized that she had left the drapes open, and her chamber absorbed the night sky. Her white sheets were tinted grayish purple, as if covered in ash. Standing at her bedside, she stepped into her black skirt, buttoned her white blouse, and fitted her veil over her hair.
As she recalled her dream, a wave of longing enveloped her. No matter how much time passed, Evangeline felt her parents’ absence as acutely as she had as a child. Her father had died suddenly three years before, his heart stopping in his sleep. Though she observed the date of his death each year, performing a novena in his honor, it was difficult to reconcile herself to the fact that he would not know how she’d grown and changed since taking vows, how she’d become more like him than either of them would have thought possible. He’d told her many times that in temperament she was like her mother—both were ambitious and single-minded, eyes trained blindly upon the end rather than the means. But in truth, it was the stamp of his personality that had been impressed upon Evangeline.
Evangeline was about to leave when she remembered the cards from her grandmother that had so frustrated her the night before. She reached under her pillow, sorted through them, and, despite the fact that she was late for adoration, decided to try one more time to understand the tangled words her grandmother had sent to her.
She removed the cards from the envelopes and placed them upon the bed. One of the images caught her attention. In her exhaustion, she had overlooked it the previous night. It was a pale sketch of an angel, its hands upon the rungs of a ladder. She was certain she had seen the image before, although she could not recall where she’d come across it or why it seemed so familiar. The hint of recognition compelled her to move another card next to it, and as she did so, something clicked in her mind. Suddenly the images made sense: The sketches of angels on the cards were fragments of a larger picture.
Evangeline rearranged the pieces, moving them into various shapes, matching colors and borders as if constructing a jigsaw puzzle until a whole panorama emerged—swarms of brilliant angels stepping up an elegant spiral staircase and into a burst of heavenly light. Evangeline knew the picture well. It was a reproduction of William Blake’s
Jacob’s Ladder,
a watercolor her father had taken her to see in the British Museum as a girl. Her mother had loved William Blake—she had collected books of Blake’s poetry and prints, and her father had bought a print of
Jacob’s Ladder
for Angela as a gift. They had brought it with them to America after Angela’s death. It was one of the only images that had adorned their plain apartment in Brooklyn.
Evangeline opened the top left card and removed the piece of paper from inside. She opened the second card and did the same. Holding the pieces of paper side by side, she saw that her grandmother’s message worked in the same fashion as the images. The message must have been written at one time, cut into squares and sealed into envelopes that Gabriella had sent in yearly intervals. If Evangeline placed the creamy pages side by side, the jumble of words came together to form comprehensible sentences. Her grandmother had found a way to keep her message safe.
Evangeline arranged the papers in the proper order, placing one sheet next to another, until a whole expanse of Gabriella’s elegant writing lay before her. Reading over it, she saw that she had been correct. The fragments fit together perfectly. Evangeline could almost hear Gabriella’s calm authoritative voice as she scanned the lines.
By the time you read this, you will be a woman of twenty-five and—if everything has worked according to the wishes of your father and me—you will be living a safe and contemplative existence under the supervision of our Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at St. Rose Convent. It is 1988 as I write this. You are just twelve years old. Surely you will wonder at how it came to pass that you are receiving this letter now, so long after it was composed. Perhaps I will have perished before you read it. Perhaps your father will be gone as well. One cannot glean the workings of the future. It is the past and the present that must occupy us. To this I ask you to turn your attention.
You may also wonder why I have been so absent from your life in recent years. Perhaps you are angry that I have not contacted you during your time at St. Rose. The time we spent together in New York, in those most important years before you went to the convent, has sustained me through much turmoil. As has the time we spent together in Paris, when you were but a baby. It is possible that you remember me from that time, although I doubt it very much. I used to take you through the Jardin du Luxembourg with your mother. These were happy afternoons, ones that I cherish to this day. You were such a little girl when your mother was murdered. It is a crime that you were robbed of her so young. I often wonder if you know how brilliantly alive she was, how much she loved you. I am certain your father, who adored Angela, has told you much about her.
He must also have told you that he insisted upon leaving Paris immediately after the incident, believing that you would be safer in America. And so you left, never to return. I do not fault him for taking you far away—he had every right to protect you, especially after what happened to your mother.
It may be difficult to understand, but no matter how I wish to see you, it is not possible for me to contact you directly. My presence would bring danger to you, to your father, and, if you have been obedient to your father’s wishes, to the good sisters at St. Rose Convent. After what happened to your mother, I am not at liberty to take such risks. I can only hope that by twenty-five you will be old enough to understand the care that you must take, the responsibility of knowing the truth of your heritage and your destiny, which, in our family, are two branches of a single tree.
It is not in my power to guess how much you know about your parents’ work. If I know your father, he has not told you a thing about angelology and has attempted to shelter you from even the rudiments of our discipline. Luca is a good man, and his motives are sound, but I would have raised you quite differently. You may be utterly unaware that your family has been taking part in one of the great secret battles of heaven and earth, and yet the brightest children see and hear everything. I suspect that you are one of these very children. Perhaps you uncovered your father’s secret by your own devices? Perhaps you even knew that your place at St. Rose was arranged before your First Communion, when Sister Perpetua—in accordance with the requirements of angelological institutions—agreed to shelter you? Perhaps you know that you, daughter of angelologists, granddaughter of angelologists, are our hope for the future. If you are ignorant of these matters, my letter may bring you quite a shock. Please read my words through to the end, dear Evangeline, no matter the distress they cause.
Your mother began her work in angelology as a chemist. She was a brilliant mathematician and an even more brilliant scientist. Indeed, hers was the best kind of mind, one capable of holding both literal and fantastic ideas at once. In her first book, she imagined the extinction of the Nephilim as a Darwinian inevitability, the logical conclusion of their interbreeding with humanity, the angelic qualities diluted to ineffectual recessive traits. Although I did not fully understand her approach—my interests and background resided in the social-mythological arena—I did understand the notion of material entropy and the ancient truth that the spirit will always exhaust the flesh. Angela’s second book about the hybridization of Nephilim with humans—applying the genetic research founded by Watson and Crick—dazzled our council. Angela rose quickly in the society. She was awarded a full professorship by age twenty-five, an unheard-of honor in our institution, and equipped with the latest technological support, the best laboratory, and unlimited research funding.
With fame came danger. Angela soon became a target. There were numerous threats upon her life. Security levels around her laboratory were high—I made sure of this myself. And yet it was in her lab that they abducted her.
It is my guess that your father has not told you the details of her abduction. It is painful to relate, and I myself have never been able to speak of it to anyone. They did not kill your mother immediately. She was taken from her laboratory and held for some weeks by Nephilistic agents in a compound in Switzerland. It is their usual method—kidnapping important angelological figures for the purpose of making a strategic trade. Our policy has always been to refuse to negotiate, but when Angela was taken, I became frantic. Policy or no policy, I would have traded the world for her safe return.
For once your father agreed with me. Many of her research notebooks were in his possession, and we decided to offer these in trade for Angela’s life. Although I did not understand the details of her work in genetics, I understood this much: The Nephilim were getting sick, their numbers were diminishing, and they wanted a cure. I communicated to Angela’s kidnappers that the notebooks contained secret information that would save their race. To my delight, they agreed to make the trade.
Perhaps I was naive to believe they would keep their end of the agreement. When I came to Switzerland and gave them Angela’s notebooks, I was given a wooden casket containing my daughter’s body. She had been dead for many days. Her skin had been badly bruised, her hair matted with blood. I kissed her cold forehead and knew that I had lost all that mattered most to me. I fear that her last days were spent in torment. The specter of her final hours is never far from my mind.
Forgive me for being the bearer of this horrible story. I am tempted to remain silent, keeping the ghastly details from you. But you are a woman now, and with age we must face the reality of things. We must fathom even the darkest realms of human existence. We must grapple with the strength of evil, its persistence in the world, its undying power over humanity, and our willingness to support it. It is little comfort, I’m sure, to know that you are not alone in your despair. For me Angela’s death is the darkest of all dark regions. My nightmares echo with her voice and with the voice of her killer.
Your father could not live in Europe after what happened. His flight to America came swift and final—he cut off contact with all of his relations and friends, including me, so that he might raise you in solitude and peace. He gave you a normal childhood, a luxury not many of us in angelological families have experienced. But there was another reason for his escape.
The Nephilim were not satisfied with the invaluable information I had relinquished so foolishly. Soon after, they ransacked my apartment in Paris, taking objects of great value to me and to our cause, including one of your mother’s logs. You see, of the collection of notebooks I surrendered in Switzerland, there was one that I left behind, believing it safe among my belongings. It was a curious collection of theoretical work your mother had been compiling for her third book. It was in its early stages and therefore incomplete, but upon first examining the notebook I had understood how brilliant, and how dangerous, and how precious it was. In fact, I believe that it was due to these theories that the Nephilim took Angela.
Once this information had fallen into the hands of the Nephilim, I knew that all my attempts at keeping its contents secret had failed. I was mortified by the loss of the notebook, but I had one consolation: I had copied it word for word into a leather journal that should be very familiar to you—it is the same notebook that was given to me by my mentor, Dr. Seraphina Valko, and the very same notebook that I gave to you after your mother’s death. Once this notebook belonged to my teacher. Now it is in your care.
The notebook contained Angela’s theory about the physical effects of music upon molecular structures. She had begun with simple experiments using lower life forms—plants, insects, earthworms—and had worked up to larger organisms, including, if her experiment log can be relied upon, a lock of hair from a Nephilistic child. She had been testing the effects of some celestial instruments—we had a number of them in our possession and Angela had full access—using Nephilistic genetic samples such as shredded wing feathers and vials of blood. Angela discovered that the music of some of these alleged celestial instruments actually had the power to alter the genetic structure of Nephilim tissue. Moreover, certain harmonic successions had the power to diminish Nephilistic power, while others appeared to have the power to increase it.
Angela had discussed the theory at length with your father. He understood her work better than anyone, and although the details are very complicated and I am ignorant of her precise scientific methods, your father helped me to understand that Angela had proof of the most incredible effect of musical vibrations upon cellular structures. Certain combinations of chords and progressions elicited profound physical results in matter. Piano music resulted in pigmentation mutation in orchids—the études of Chopin leaving a dapple of pink upon white petals, Beethoven muddying yellow petals brown. Violin music brought an increase in the number of segments in an earthworm. The incessant dinging of the triangle caused a number of houseflies to be born without wings. And so on.
You might imagine my fascination when, some time ago, many years after Angela’s death, I discovered that a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto had created a similar experiment, using water as the medium upon which musical vibrations were tested. Using advanced photographic technology, Dr. Emoto was able to capture the drastic change in the molecular structure of water after it was subjected to certain musical vibrations. He asserted that certain strains of music created new molecular formations in the water. In essence these experiments agreed with your mother’s experiments, corroborating that musical vibration works at the most basic level of organic material to change structural composition.
This seemingly frivolous experimentation becomes particularly interesting when looked at in the light of Angela’s work on angelic biology. Your father was unnaturally reticent about Angela’s experiments, refusing to tell me more than I saw in the notebook. But from that small exposure, I could see that your mother had been testing the effects of some celestial instruments in our possession on Nephilistic genetic samples, primarily feathers taken from the creatures’ wings. She discovered that some of these alleged celestial instruments had the power to alter the very genetic building blocks of Nephilistic tissue. Moreover, certain harmonic successions played by these instruments had the power not only to alter cell structure but to corrupt the integrity of the Nephilim genome. I am certain Angela gave her life for this discovery. The invasion of my quarters convinced your father you were not safe in Paris. It was clear that the Nephilim knew too much.
But the story that occasions this letter revolves around a hypothesis buried deep within Angela’s many proven theories. It is a hypothesis regarding the lyre of Orpheus, which she knew had been hidden in the United States by Abigail Rockefeller in 1943. Angela had proposed a theory connecting her scientific discoveries about the celestial instruments to the lyre of Orpheus, which was believed to be more powerful than all the other instruments combined. Whereas before the Nephilim had acquired the notebooks they had only vague notions of the lyre’s importance, they learned from Angela’s work that it was the primary instrument, the one that could return the Nephilim to a state of angelic purity unseen upon earth since the time of the Watchers. Angela may well have found the very solution to Nephilistic diminishment in the music of the Watchers’ lyre, known in modern times as the lyre of Orpheus.
Be forewarned, dear Evangeline: Understanding the significance of Orpheus’s lyre has proved to be a trial. Legend surrounds Orpheus so heavily that we cannot discern the precise outline of his mortal life. We do not know the year of his birth, his true lineage, or the real measure of his talents with the lyre. He was reputed to have been born of the muse Calliope and the river god Oeagrus, but this, of course, is mythology, and it is our work to separate the mythological from the historical, disentangle legend from fact, magic from truth. Nor is the real measure of his talents with the lyre known. Did he give humanity poetry? Did he discover the lyre on his legendary journey to the underworld? Was he as influential in his own lifetime as history claims? By the sixth century B.C., he was known through the Greek world as the master of songs and music, but how he came upon the instrument of the angels has been widely debated among historians. Your mother’s work only gave confirmation to long-held theories of the lyre’s importance. Her hypothesis, so essential to our progress against the Nephilim, led to her death. This you now know. What you may not know is that her work is not finished. I have spent my life striving to complete it. And you, Evangeline, will one day continue where I have left off.
Your father may or may not have told you of Angela’s advances and contributions to our cause. It is beyond my power to know. He closed himself to me many years ago, and I cannot hope that he will welcome me into his confidence again. You, however, are different. If you demand to know the details of your mother’s work, he will tell you everything. It is your place to continue the tradition of your family. It is your heritage and your destiny. Luca will guide you where I cannot, I’m certain of it. You must only ask him directly. And, my dear, you must persevere. With my heartfelt blessing, I urge you on. But you must be well aware of your role in the future of our sacred discipline and the grave dangers that await you. There are many who would see our work eliminated and who will kill indiscriminately to reach that end. Your mother died at the hands of the Grigori family, whose efforts have kept the battle between Nephilim and angelologists alive. I daresay you must be warned of the dangers you face and beware of those who wish you harm.