Sneja continued, “If you have wondered why it has been so long since Otterley has shown her wings properly, it is because they did not develop. They are tiny and useless, the wings of a child. She cannot fly, and she certainly cannot display them. Can you imagine how ridiculous Otterley would look if she were to open such appendages?”
“I had no idea,” Percival said, incredulous. Despite the resentment he felt for his sister, he was deeply protective of Otterley.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Sneja said. “You don’t seem to notice much but your own pleasure and your own suffering. Your sister has tried to hide her predicament from all of us for more than a century. But the truth of the matter is, she is not like you or me. Your wings were glorious, once upon a time. And my wings are incomparable. Otterley is a lower breed.”
“You think she is incapable of directing the Gibborim,” Percival said, understanding at last why their mother had told him Otterley’s secret. “You think she will lose control of the attack.”
“If only you could assume your rightful role, my son,” Sneja said, her voice filling with disappointment, as if she had already resigned herself to Percival’s failure. “If only it were you taking up our cause. Perhaps we—”
Unable to listen to another word, Percival disconnected the call. Examining the highway, he saw the blacktop stretch away from him, twisting through the trees and disappearing around a bend. There was nothing he could do to assist Otterley. He was helpless to restore the glory of his family.
Route 9W, Milton, New York
B
y the time they had made it to the small highway outside Milton, Gabriella and Verlaine had smoked half the pack of cigarettes, filling the Porsche with the heavy, acrid scent of smoke. Verlaine cracked the window, allowing a stream of chilled air into the car. He wished Gabriella would continue with her story, but he didn’t want to press her. She appeared frail and tired, as if the very act of recounting her past had exhausted her—dark circles appeared below her eyes, and her shoulders drooped slightly. The abundance of smoke swirling through the car stung Verlaine’s eyes but appeared to have little effect upon Gabriella. She stepped on the gas, intent to reach the convent.
Verlaine looked out the window as the snowy forest flashed by. Trees expanded from the highway, row upon row of winter-barren birch, sugar maple, and oak stretching far as Verlaine could see. He watched the roadside, looking for clues that they had arrived—a wooden sign marking the entrance to the convent or the church spire rising above the trees. He had mapped the course from New York City to St. Rose at his apartment, noting the bridges and highways. If his estimate was correct, the convent would be just miles north of Milton. They should be upon it at any moment.
“Look in the mirror,” Gabriella said, her voice unnaturally calm.
Verlaine followed her instructions. A black SUV followed at a distance. “They’ve been there for the past few miles,” Gabriella said. “It seems that they are not giving up on you.”
“Are you sure it’s them?” Verlaine asked, looking over his shoulder. “What will we do?”
“If I try to run,” she said, “they will follow us. If I continue onward, we will arrive at St. Rose at the same moment and have to confront them there.”
“And then what?”
“They will not let us go,” Gabriella said. “Not this time.”
Gabriella hit the brakes and jerked the wheel, turning precipitously onto a gravel road. The Porsche spun on its tires, delineated a half circle over the snowy road, tipping slightly from the momentum. For a moment the car felt free of gravity, thrown into a state of weightless free fall on the ice, nothing more than a box of metal fishtailing right and left as the tires sought traction. Gabriella slowed and held the wheel, trying to gain control. As it steadied, she hit the gas again until the car sped ever faster, climbing the incline of a long, slow-rising hill, the noise of the engine deafening. Gravel crackled on the windshield in a barrage of sharp explosions.
Verlaine looked over his shoulder. The black SUV had turned onto the road, following at a distance behind.
“Here they come,” he said, and Gabriella gunned the engine, taking them higher and higher along the hill. As the road crested, the thickets of trees gave way to a white sweep of valley, beyond which a dilapidated barn stood red as a splotch of blood against the snow.
“As much as I love this car, it doesn’t have the capacity for speed,” Gabriella said. “It’s going to be impossible to outrun them. We need to find a way to lose them. Or hide.”
Verlaine scanned the valley. From the highway to the barn, there was nothing but exposed frozen fields. Beyond the barn the road twisted up another hill, snaking its way into a copse of evergreens. “Can we make it to the top?” Verlaine asked.
“It doesn’t look like we have much choice.”
Gabriella drove past the barn, where the road tracked a slow, steady ascent. By the time they reached the evergreens, the black SUV had gained so much ground that Verlaine could make out the features of the men in the front seat.
The one in the passenger seat leaned out the window, aimed a gun, and shot, missing them.
“I can’t go faster than this,” Gabriella said, growing frustrated. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she tossed a leather purse to Verlaine. “Find my gun. It’s inside.”
Verlaine unzipped the bag, digging through a tangle of objects until his fingers brushed cold metal. He lifted a small silver handgun from the bottom of the bag.
“Have you shot a gun before?”
“Never.”
“I’ll walk you through it,” she said. “Switch off the safety. Now roll down your window. Hold steady. Good, now level your arm.”
As Verlaine positioned the gun, the man in the SUV took aim.
“Just a moment,” Gabriella said. She swerved into the opposite lane and slowed, giving Verlaine a clear shot at the windshield.
“Shoot,” Gabriella said. “Now.”
Verlaine aimed the gun level with the SUV and squeezed the trigger. The bigger car’s windshield cracked into a web of filaments. Gabriella slammed on the brakes as the Mercedes hit a guardrail and flipped over the edge of the valley road, metal crunching as it rolled. Verlaine watched the upended vehicle, its tires spinning.
“Brilliant shot,” Gabriella said, pulling to the side of the road and cutting the engine. She gave him a look of pride, clearly pleasantly surprised by his aim. “Give me the gun. I need to make sure they’re dead.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Of course,” she snapped, taking the gun and climbing out of the car and over the guardrail. “Come, you might learn something.”
Verlaine followed Gabriella down the icy hillside, walking in her tracks through the snow. Looking above, he saw that a mass of dark clouds had collected. They hung abnormally low, as if they might descend upon the valley at any moment. Once the two of them reached the car, Gabriella instructed Verlaine to kick out the windshield. He bashed chunks of glass with the heel of his sneaker as she crouched down and peered inside.
“You hit the driver,” she said, drawing Verlaine’s gaze to the dead man.
“Beginner’s luck.”
“I should say so.” She gestured to the second man, whose body lay twenty feet away, facedown in the snow. “Two birds with one stone. The second was thrown when the car flipped.”
Verlaine could hardly believe what lay before him. The man’s body had transformed into the creature he’d seen through his train window the night before. A pair of scarlet wings splayed open over its back, the feathers brushing the snow. As an icy wind blew over Verlaine, it was impossible to tell if his body tingled from the cold or from the shock at what lay before him.
Meanwhile, Gabriella had managed to open the door and was searching the SUV, emerging with a gym bag, the very bag he’d left in his Renault the previous afternoon.
“That’s mine,” Verlaine said. “They took it when they broke into my car yesterday.”
Gabriella unzipped the bag, withdrew a folder, and sorted through its contents.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something that might explain how much Percival knows,” Gabriella said, examining the papers. “Has he seen these?”
Verlaine peered over her shoulder. “I didn’t give these files to him, but those guys might have.”
Gabriella turned away from the wreckage and made her way back up the snowy hill to the car. “We had better hurry,” she said. “The good sisters of St. Rose are in more immediate danger than I had feared.”
Verlaine took the driver’s seat, deciding that he would drive the remaining miles to the convent. He turned the Porsche around and headed back to the highway. Everything before him lay still and calm. The rolling hills appeared sedate under blankets of snow. The barn slouched in abandonment, the cloud-heavy sky vaulted above. Aside from a few scratches and a guttering in the engine, the old Porsche carried on with admirable resilience. In fact, it appeared that nothing had changed significantly in the past ten minutes but Verlaine. The leather steering wheel grew slick under his hands, and he found that his heart beat hard in his chest. Images of the dead men appeared in his mind.
Intuiting Verlaine’s thoughts, Gabriella said, “You did the right thing.”
“I’ve never even held a gun before today.”
“They were brutal killers,” she said, her voice businesslike, as if the dispatching of men were something she performed on a regular basis. “In a world of good and evil, one cannot shy from making distinctions.”
“It isn’t a distinction I’ve thought much about.”
“That,” Gabriella said softly, “will change if you remain with us.”
Verlaine slowed the car, pausing at a stop sign before turning back onto the highway. The convent was only miles ahead.
“Is Evangeline one of you?” he asked.
“Evangeline knows very little about angelology. We told her nothing about it when she was a child. She is young and obedient—traits that might have been her undoing if she weren’t extremely bright. Placing her in the hands of the sisters of St. Rose Convent was her father’s idea—he was Catholic, quite attached to the romantic notion that young ladies are best sheltered from danger by hiding them in a cloister. He could not help it. He was Italian. Such notions ran in his blood.”
“And she listened to him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your granddaughter gave up everything worth living for simply because her father told her to?”
“There is perhaps some room for debate about what is and what is not worth living for,” Gabriella said. “But you are right: Evangeline did exactly as she was instructed. Luca brought her to the United States after Evangeline’s mother—my daughter, Angela—was murdered. I imagine that her upbringing was rigorously religious. I imagine he must have prepared her from an early age for her eventual induction into St. Rose Convent. How else in this day and age would a young girl of her gifts go so willingly?”
Verlaine said, “It seems rather medieval.”
“But you did not know Luca,” Gabriella said. “And you do not know Evangeline. Their affection for each other was something to behold. They were inseparable. I believe that Evangeline would have done anything, absolutely anything, her father told her—including giving her life to the church.”
They drove along the highway in silence, the Porsche’s engine rattling, the forest rising on both sides. Only an hour before, it had seemed a strangely restful journey. But every cluster of trees, every bend in the road, every narrow lane funneling into their path presented the opportunity for ambush. Verlaine pressed his foot on the gas, pushing the Porsche faster and faster. He checked the mirror every few seconds, as if the SUV might appear at any moment, the assassins rising from the dead.
St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
E
vangeline 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.