Angelopolis(2)

Verlaine took the card. It was a New York driver’s license with a photo of a woman with black

hair and green eyes. His heart beat hard in his chest as he realized that it belonged to Evangeline

Cacciatore. He took a deep breath before turning back to Bruno.

“Do you think this could really be her?” Verlaine said, watching his boss’s expression carefully.

He knew that everything—his relationship with Bruno, his connection to the Angelogical Society, the

course of his life from that point forward—would depend upon how he handled himself in the next ten

minutes.

“Evangeline is a human woman; this is a blue-blooded Nephil female,” Bruno replied, nodding

toward the bloody corpse between them. “But be my guest.”

Verlaine slid his fingers between the buttons of the victim’s trench coat, his hands trembling so

hard he had to steady himself to make out the shape of her shoulders. The features of the woman were

utterly unrecognizable.

He remembered the first time he had seen Evangeline. She had been both beautiful and somber at

once, looking at him with her large green eyes as if he were a thief come to steal their sacred texts.

She had been suspicious of his motives and fierce in her determination to keep him out. Then he made

her laugh and her tough exterior had crumbled. That moment between them had been burned into him,

and no matter how he tried, he had never been able to forget Evangeline. It had been over a decade

since they had stood together in the library at St. Rose Convent, books open before them, both of them

unaware of the true nature of the world. “There were Giants on the Earth in those days, and after.”

These words, and the woman who showed them to him, had changed his life.

He hadn’t told anyone the truth about Evangeline. Indeed, no one knew that she was one of the

creatures. For Verlaine, keeping Evangeline’s secret had been an unspoken vow: He knew the truth,

but he would never tell a soul. It was, he realized now, the only way to remain faithful to the woman

he loved.

Verlaine tucked the driver’s license into his pocket and walked away.

McDonald’s, avenue des Champs-Élysées, first arrondissement, Paris

Paris was full of angelologists and, as such, one of the most dangerous places in the universe for an

Emim angel like Eno, who had a tendency toward recklessness. Like the rest of her kind, she was tall

and willowy, with high cheekbones, full lips, and gray skin. She wore heavy black eye makeup, red

lipstick, and black leather, and often wore her black wings openly, unafraid, daring angelologists to

see them. The gesture was considered an act of provocation, but Eno didn’t have any intention of

hiding. This would be their world soon. The Grigoris had promised her this.

Even so, there were angelologists lurking everywhere in Paris—scholars who looked like they

hadn’t left the Academy of Angelology’s archive in fifty years, overzealous initiates taking

photographs of whatever creature they could find, angelological biologists looking for samples of

angelic blood, and, worst of all as far as Eno was concerned, the teams of angel hunters out to arrest

all angelic creatures. These idiots often mistook Golobiums for Emim and Emim for the more pure

creatures like the Grigoris. Hunters seemed to be on every corner lately, watching, waiting, ready to

take their prey into custody. For those who could detect the hunters, life in Paris was merely

inconvenient. For those who could not, each movement through the city was a deadly game.

Of course Eno had strict rules of engagement, and her first and most important rule was to leave the

risk of being captured to others. After she had killed Evangeline, she’d removed herself from the

scene quickly and walked on the Champs-Élysées, where nobody would think to look for her. She

understood that sometimes it was best to hide in plain sight.

Eno folded her hands around the Styrofoam cup, taking in the ceaseless motion of the Champs-

Élysées. She would be going back to her masters as soon as possible now that her work in Paris was

finished. She’d been assigned to find and kill a young female Nephil. She’d tracked the creature for

weeks, watching her, learning her patterns of behavior. She’d become curious about her target.

Evangeline was unlike any other Nephil she had seen before. According to her masters, Evangeline

was a child of the Grigori, but she had none of the distinguishing characteristics of an angel of her

lineage. She had been raised among regular people, had been abandoned by the Nephilim, and—from

everything that Eno had observed—was dangerously sympathetic to the ways of humanity. The

Grigoris wanted Evangeline dead. Eno never let her masters down.