barren trees rising on each side, snow frosting their branches. The driver slowed and turned into the
Cimetière du Montparnasse, stopping before a great iron gate. He gave a short honk from the horn,
and the gate opened, rattling aside as the car crawled forward. The interior of the cemetery was still
and frozen, coated in ice that glimmered in the headlights, and I felt for a moment that this one
shimmering place had been spared the ugliness and depravity of the war. The driver cut the engine
before a statue of an angel perched upon a stone pedestal— Le Cénie du Sommeil Éternel, The Spirit
of Eternal Sleep, a bronze guardian gazing over the dead.
I stepped out of the car, still groggy with exhaustion. Although the night was clear, the stars
glowing above in the sky, the air hung wet upon the tombstones, giving the faintest aura of fog. A man
stepped from behind the statue, clearly assigned to meet the car, but all the same I started with fright.
He wore the clothing of a priest. I had never seen the man before, not at any of our meetings or
assemblies, and I had been trained to be suspicious of everyone. Only the month before, the Nephilim
had tracked down and killed one of our senior council members, a professor of ethereal musicology
named Dr. Michael, taking his entire collection of musicological writings. It was one instance of a
senior-level scholar’s losing priceless information. The enemy waited for such chances.
Dr. Seraphina appeared to know the priest and followed him readily. Urging the group to come
with him, the priest led us to a dilapidated stone structure in a far corner of the cemetery, one of the
remaining buildings of a long-abandoned monastery. Years before, the building had served as the
Valkos’ lecture hall. Now it remained empty. The priest unlocked a swollen wooden door and led us
inside.
None of us, not even Dr. Seraphina, who had close ties to the most senior council members—
indeed, Dr. Raphael Valko led the resistance in Paris—knew exactly where we would meet during
the war. We had no regular schedule, and all messages were delivered by word of mouth or—like
this one—in silence. Assemblies convened in impromptu locations—out-of-the-way cafés, small
towns beyond Paris, abandoned churches. Even with these extreme precautions, I knew that we were
most likely being monitored every moment.
The priest brought us into a hallway off the sanctuary, stopped before a door, and gave three sharp
raps. The door opened, revealing a stone room lit by exposed bulbs—more precious supplies bought
on the black market with dollars from America. The narrow windows were covered by heavy black
cloth, to block out the light. The meeting appeared to be under way—members of the council sat at a
round wooden table. As the priest ushered us inside, the council members stood, examining us with
great interest. I was not allowed to attend the council meetings and had no method of gauging their
usual proceedings, but clearly the council had been waiting for the expedition party to arrive.
Dr. Raphael Valko, acting chair of the council, sat at the head of the table. The last I had seen him
had been as he drove away from my farmhouse in Alsace, leaving me in exile, an abandonment for
which I could not forgive him, even though I was aware that it had been for the best. He had changed
significantly since then. His hair had grayed about the temples, and his manner had taken on a new
level of gravity. I would have taken him for a stranger if I’d met him in the street.
Greeting us tersely, Dr. Raphael gestured to a number of empty chairs and began what I knew
would be the first of many rounds of questioning about the expedition. “You have much to report,” he
said, folding his hands upon the table. “Begin as you wish.”
Dr. Seraphina gave a detailed description of the gorge: the steep vertical drop, the rock shelves
that studded the lower regions of the cavern, and the distinct sound of the waterfall in the distance.
She described the body of the angel, giving a list of precise measurements and outlining the
characteristics she had recorded in her field notebook, mentioning with obvious pride the distinct
genitalia. She reported that the photographs would reveal new truths about the physicality of the
angels. The expedition had been a great success.
As the other members of the party spoke, each giving an elaborate account of the journey, I felt
myself turn inward. I stared at my hands in the dim light. They were eaten raw from the cold and ice
of the gorge and burned from the angel. I wondered at the sense of dislocation that had overtaken me.
Had we been in the mountains only hours before? My fingers trembled so severely that I tucked them
into the pockets of my thick wool coat, to hide them. In my mind the aquamarine eyes of the angel