were known that Angela was an angel, such a taint would have ruined them both. The threat was not
in what she was, but what she could become. Or, rather,” Godwin said, meeting Evangeline’s eye,
“the danger was in her genetic potential—in what her body could create.”
“The threat was me.”
“I wouldn’t say that you pose much of a threat, Evangeline,” Godwin said, placing the scalpel on
Evangeline’s neck and pressing it against her skin.
Godwin slid the sharp edge under Evangeline’s white skin until a bulb of blue blood rose,
collecting into a globe. He watched it rise and fall over her collarbone, pooling and expanding in the
arc of her neck. He took a glass vial from the table. Holding it to the light, he felt a surge of triumph.
Hermitage Bridge, Winter Canal, St. Petersburg
Verlaine’s thoughts were in a state of chaos as he walked with Vera and Bruno alongside the palace
embankment, the dark water of the canal sluicing by below, glistening as if coated with a layer of oil.
Two grand buildings rose on each side of the stone pathway, ornate and Italianate, and, for a moment,
Verlaine had the feeling he was walking through a historical film about the Renaissance, that
noblemen in velvet cloaks would step from behind the shadows. The contrast between his physical
surroundings and the images playing in his mind—of Angela and Percival and the syringe filled with
the virus—left him disoriented.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vera gesture from one building to the other. “Old Hermitage
and the Hermitage Theater.”
Verlaine stepped ahead, replaying the film in his mind. Of all he had seen in the Hermitage, the
image of Percival Grigori haunted him most. His golden wings, his long body glistening with the
amber excretion, the ropes cinching his wrists and ankles—Percival had been a sublime creature, one
that Verlaine didn’t fear so much as admire. Of course Verlaine had seen such angels before. He’d
interrogated many in much the same fashion as Angela had. But now something had shifted inside him.
Now that he had seen Evangeline up close, touched her wings and taken in the chill of her body, it
was impossible for Verlaine to think that the Nephilim were simply the enemy, nothing more than
horrible parasites that had attached themselves to humanity, devils marked for extermination. He felt
both strangely repulsed by the aims and methods of the society and desperate for them to help him find
Evangeline.
He turned to Vera. She had caught up with him and was walking by his side, her hands shoved into
the pockets of her jacket.
“There is absolutely no record of this structure, this Angelolopolis, anywhere,” she said, as if
they’d been discussing the subject all along. “Not a single angelologist has seen such a place, nor has
an expeditionary team attempted to locate one.”
“That is because nobody in his right mind would consider the possibility that the Nephilim would
actually construct one,” Bruno said, walking behind them.
Verlaine turned back to look at Bruno. “And yet,” he said, annoyed by Bruno’s dismissive manner,
“Percival Grigori spoke of it as if it were already under way.”
“The video was taken nearly three decades ago,” Bruno replied. “If they’d constructed such a thing,
we would know about it.”
“Grigori could have been lying,” Vera offered. “An Angelopolis is a utopia of angelic creatures,
something everyone hears about at school but never wholly believes to be real. The Nephilim may
have wanted to build it, but that doesn’t mean that it was physically possible to do so. It’s a concept
more than anything, an idea that has existed for the angels since the great massacre of the Flood.”
“Stories of a mythical angel paradise called an Angelopolis are like Peter Pan’s Never Never
Land,” Bruno said.
“But the film points to the fact that the Nephilim—at least Percival Grigori—were working to
build it,” Verlaine said. “He mentioned Valkine. They had a sample of Evangeline’s blood. It seems
clear to me that whatever they wanted from Evangeline in 1984 is the same motive for why they want
her now.”
Vera stopped abruptly and turned to Verlaine. “Evangeline Cacciatore hasn’t been seen since
1999.”
Verlaine looked across the water of the Winter Canal, his gaze settling upon the wide stretch of
embankment.
Bruno said, “Evangeline was abducted by an Emim angel last evening in Paris. Verlaine had the
honor of speaking with her beforehand. The Cherub with Chariot Egg was in her possession—that is
how it came to us.”