Angelology(129)

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

Evangeline 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.