Angelopolis(105)

himself, calling their names, his voice filled with a desperate hope that Verlaine understood: He felt

the same violent need to call Evangeline back, to convince her to leave Lucien behind. To Verlaine’s

surprise, Azov caught Evangeline’s attention—she walked across the snowy field, approaching them,

Lucien at her side.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want with us?”

Lucien glanced at the vessel in Azov’s hand. Whatever Azov was doing, Lucien understood it

immediately. “Don’t go closer,” he said, opening his wings and wrapping them in a protective gesture

around Evangeline’s shoulders.

Azov took a plastic vessel from his pocket and held it out to her. “This is for you,” he said. “It will

bring you—and the other creatures like you—back.”

“Back to what?” Evangeline asked.

“You have a choice,” Azov replied.

“You don’t have to be one of them anymore,” Verlaine said, stepping closer to Evangeline.

“If I’m not one of them,” she said, her gaze falling upon Verlaine, “what will I be?”

“Human,” Verlaine said. “You’ll be like us.”

Without taking her eyes from Verlaine, she said, “I’m not sure I know how to be like you anymore.”

“I can teach you,” Verlaine said. “I’ll help you return to what you were. If you let me.”

Evangeline extricated herself from Lucien’s wings and, her feet crunching in the snow, walked to

Azov and took the medicine of Noah. Verlaine could almost see her thoughts as they crossed her mind

—her expression changed from consternation to curiosity to determination. She brushed the cork of

the vessel with her fingernail and tilted the vessel back and forth, sending the liquid from one end of

the tube to the other. Then, with a quick, decisive gesture, Evangeline slid the potion into her pocket.

Turning away, she ran to join Lucien.

Verlaine started after her, but Dmitri and Azov wrestled him back, pulling him across the field,

toward the Neva.

“Come on,” Yana yelled from the driver’s seat. “We have to go now.”

As he struggled, using all his strength to reach Evangeline, he could see that the dense black smoke

rising from the reactor had grown thicker. A noise filled the air. It began as a vibration, a clattering as

sharp as the hum of a cicada. The daylight faded to a thin light, pale and pink, as a series of flashes

rocked the earth. Within seconds, the air filled with ash. Then the exodus began. From the depths of

the smoke, a swarm of wings swirled up from the crater, rising, creating a mass of creatures so thick

that the sky fell dark. In the shadow of the escaped angels, the reactor burned.

M5 Highway, Siberian Steppes, Russia

Bruno clung to the door. Yana drove fast and erratic, the tires sliding as she sped through the tundra.

Each bump was torture. Glancing out the window, Bruno could see that the world had begun to

change. The sky turned ashy, and then bloodred. They drove past villagers staring up at the heavens;

they passed herds of goats struck dead, the bodies lying in the snow; they passed streams of water

flowing with blood; they passed the decimated, charred trunks of burned trees. Increasing her speed,

Yana careened along the road, sliding ever more dangerously close to the sheer icy edge. A flock of

Watchers broke from the crust of the earth, lifting into the sky like crazed birds. Lightning coursed

above, crackling through the ionized atmosphere, alighting upon the craggy mountain peak ahead of

them. The earth appeared to tip upon its axis and a nexus of stars fell overhead, glowing with a

strange, bright fervor. The moon grew large and purple. Rain fell, hissing upon them, staining the

snow black. The fallen angels were rebelling. The battle had begun.

Yana pulled over. At the roadside Verlaine packed snow into his hands and returned to Bruno. The

snow formed hard, wet packs. Bruno felt the delicious cold against his singed body as Verlaine held

the melting ice to his skin, pressing it lightly against his cheek. The cold gave him some relief. Bruno

realized that he was shivering, whether because of the cold or the pain or the terrible fear that was

growing inside of him, he could not tell.

Somewhere in that sizzling hole in Chelyabinsk lay the man who had started all of this. Bruno

closed his eyes, trying to forget what he’d seen. Of all the horrors of that day—the Nephilim breaking

free of their cages, the Watchers bearing down upon them from above, the explosions thundering

through the underground prison—nothing compared with the terrible end Merlin Godwin had met at

the hands of Eno. Bruno had watched it all from a distance—the way Eno rose up like a cobra behind