Angelology (56 page)

Verlaine was distracted from the body by voices at the far side of the church. The population of St. Rose Convent filed into the courtyard and began to drag the bodies of Gibborim to the riverbank. Verlaine searched for Gabriella among them but could find her nowhere in their number. There were dozens of nuns, all dressed in heavy overcoats and boots. The women showed great determination in the face of the unpleasant work, organizing themselves into small groups and getting down to the business at hand without hesitation. As the bodies were large and unwieldy, the effort of four sisters was required to transport one creature. They dragged the corpses slowly over the courtyard to the banks of the Hudson, forming a groove of packed snow that slicked to ice. After stacking the creatures one upon another under the bower of a birch tree, they rolled them into the river. The bodies sank below the glassy surface as if weighted with lead.

As the nuns worked, Gabriella emerged from the church with a young woman, both of their faces blackened with smoke. He recognized Gabriella’s features in the young woman—the shape of the nose, the point of the chin, the high cheekbones. It was Evangeline.

“Come,” Gabriella said to Verlaine, clutching a brown leather case under her arm. “We haven’t time to waste.”

“But the Porsche has only two seats,” Verlaine said, realizing the problem even as he articulated it.

Gabriella stopped short, as if her inability to foresee the dilemma at hand annoyed her more than she wished to let on.

“Is there a problem?” Evangeline asked, and Verlaine felt himself drawn to the musical quality of her voice, the serenity of her manner, the ghostly shade of Gabriella in her features.

“Our car is rather small,” Verlaine said, wondering what Evangeline might be thinking.

Evangeline looked at him a moment too long, as if verifying that he was the same man she’d met the day before. When she smiled, he knew that he had not been mistaken. Something between them had taken hold.

“Follow me,” Evangeline said, turning on her heel and walking swiftly away. She traversed the courtyard quickly, with purpose, her small black shoes breaking through the snow. Verlaine knew that he would have followed her anywhere she cared to go.

Ducking between two of the utility vans, Evangeline led them along an icy sidewalk and through the side door of a brick garage. Inside, the air was stagnant and free of the dense smell of the fire. She lifted a set of keys from a hook and shook them.

“Get in,” she said, gesturing to the brown four-door sedan. “I’ll drive.”

—The Venerable Father Clematis of Thrace,
Notes on the First Angelological Expedition,
Translated by Dr. Raphael Valko

December 24, 1999, 12:41 P.M.

 

P
ercival 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.”

E
vangeline turned onto West Seventy-ninth Street, driving slowly behind a city bus. Pausing at a red light, she glanced down Broadway, squinting to see the afternoon streetscape, and felt a rush of recognition. She’d spent many weekends with her father walking these streets, stopping for breakfast at any one of the cramped diners tucked along the avenues. The chaos of people slogging through the slush, the squish of buildings, the incessant movement of traffic in every direction—New York City was deeply familiar, despite her years away.

Gabriella lived only a few blocks ahead. Although Evangeline had not been to her grandmother’s apartment since her childhood, she remembered it well—the subdued façade of the brownstone, the elegant metalwork fence, the slanted view of the park. It used to be that she had recalled these images with care. Now thoughts of St. Rose filled her mind. Try as she might, she could not forget how the sisters looked at her as she left the church, as if the attack were somehow her fault and their youngest member had brought the Gibborim upon them. Evangeline kept her gaze fixed upon the pathway as she left them. It was all she could manage to get to the edge of the garage without looking back.

In the end Evangeline had betrayed her instincts and looked into the rearview mirror to see the sooty snow and the baleful sisters collected at the riverside. The convent was as dilapidated as a ruined castle, the lawn coated with ash from the fires. She, too, had changed. In a matter of minutes, she had shed her role as Sister Evangeline, Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, and had become Evangeline Angelina Cacciatore, Angelologist. As they drove from the grounds, birch trees rising at each side of the car like hundreds of marble pillars, Evangeline believed she saw the shadow of a fiery angel glinting in the distance, beckoning her onward.