Angelology(156)

station—the bottles of soda, the packaged food, the orderly array of magazines—remarking how

simple life could be. Only yesterday he would not have thought much of the creature comforts of a

gasstation convenience store. He would have been too annoyed by the long line and neon lights to

actually look around. Now he felt a perverse admiration for anything that offered such safe

familiarity. He added a pack of cigarettes to the tally and returned to the car.

Outside, Gabriella waited in the driver’s seat. Verlaine took the passenger side and gave Gabriella

the pack of cigarettes. She accepted them with a terse smile, but he could see that the gesture pleased

her. Then, without waiting another moment, she threw the car into gear and drove onto the small

country highway.

Verlaine unwrapped the pack of cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it for Gabriella. She rolled the

window down a crack, the cigarette smoke dispersing in a stream of fresh air. “You don’t seem to be

afraid, but I know that what I told you must have some effect upon you.”

“I’m still working on getting my mind around it all,” Verlaine replied, thinking, even as he spoke,

that this was a huge understatement. In truth, he was baffled by what he’d learned. He couldn’t

understand how she managed to stay so calm. Finally, he said, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” she asked, keeping her eye on the road.

“Live like this,” he replied. “As if nothing abnormal is happening. As if you’ve accepted it.”

Keeping her eyes on the road, Gabriella said, “I became part of this battle so long ago that I am

hardened to it. It is impossible for me to remember what it is like to live without knowing.

Discovering their existence is like being told the earth is round—it goes against everything one senses

to be true. Yet it is reality. I cannot imagine what it is like to live without them haunting my thoughts,

to wake in the morning and believe that we live in a just, free, equal world. I suppose I have adjusted

my vision of the world to suit this reality. I see everything in white and black, good and evil. We are

good, they are evil. If we are to live, they must die. There are those of us who believe in appeasement

—that we can work out a way to live side by side—but many also believe we cannot rest until they

have been exterminated.”

“I would think,” Verlaine said, surprised by the adamancy of Gabriella’s voice, “it would be more

complicated than that”

“Of course, it is more complicated. There are reasons for my strong feelings. While I have been an

angelologist all of my adult life, I have not always hated the Nephilim as I do today,” Gabriella said,

her voice quiet, almost vulnerable. “I will tell you a story, one that very few have heard before.

Perhaps it will help you to understand my extremism. Perhaps you will see why it is so important to

me that every last one of them is killed.”

Gabriella tossed the cigarette out the window, lit another, her eyes trained upon the winding

highway.

“In the second year of my schooling at the Angelological Society in Paris, I met the love of my life.

This is not something I would have admitted at the time, nor would I have made this claim in middle

age. But I am an old woman now—older than I look, as a matter of fact—and I can say with great

certainty that I will never love again as I did in the summer of 1939. I was fifteen then, too young to

fall in love, perhaps. Or maybe it is only then, with the dew of childhood still in my eyes, that I was

capable of such love. I will never know, of course.”

Gabriella paused, as if weighing her words, and continued.

“I was a peculiar girl, to put it mildly. I was obsessed with my studies in the way that some

become obsessed with riches or love or fame. I came from a family of wealthy angelologists—many

of my relatives had trained in the academy. I was also inordinately competitive. Socializing with my

peers was out of the question, and I thought nothing of working night and day in order to succeed. I

wanted to be at the top of my class in every respect, and routinely I was at the top. By the second term

of my first year, it was clear that there were only two students to have distinguished themselves—

myself and a young woman named Celestine, a brilliant girl who later became a dear friend.”

Verlaine nearly choked. “Celestine?” he said. “Celestine Clochette who came to St. Rose Convent

in 1943?”

“It was 1944,” Gabriella corrected. “But that is another story. This story begins one afternoon in

April 1939, a chill, rainy afternoon, as April afternoons tend to be in Paris. The cobblestones