As they rounded a corner, Eno stopped and faced Verlaine. Her golden eyes rested on his,
challenging him to come closer. A delicate white membrane had fallen over her eyes, creating a milky
sheath, like the eyes of a reptile. She blinked and the film retracted. For a terrifying moment he felt
that she would kiss him. A shiver of electricity passed through him, a kind of recognition that Verlaine
didn’t want to admit feeling, but the truth of it hit him squarely in the chest: Eno was one of the most
frightening, most seductive creatures he’d ever seen.
He needed to hit her just hard enough to stun her, so he could get a cuff around her neck. He
touched his back pocket, making sure the device was where he always kept it—it was so thin and
flexible that it rolled up to the size of a coin—and then grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back hard
and kicking her feet out from under her. She landed on the sidewalk, hitting the pavement, her bag
falling at her side. Verlaine grabbed it, threw it from her reach, and dug his knee into her chest,
pinning her to the concrete. He’d knocked the breath out of her—he could hear her gasp as she
struggled to breathe. Verlaine held her wrists together with one hand and grabbed the collar from his
back pocket with the other. But as he pressed the metal to her neck, she pushed him away with such
ease, twisted from under him and jumped to her feet, a smile changing her icy features to the radiant
beauty of a Botticelli. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Verlaine lunged, landing a blow to her stomach. She countered by dragging her fingernails across
his face, then swept his legs out from under him. In a blur of movement, he hit the sidewalk. He heard
the sharp sound of Eno’s boots tapping against the cobblestones as she fled.
He jumped up and started after her. She was fast, but Verlaine kept pace with her until she opened
her wings. They glistened, vibrating with energy. She lifted off the ground and flew through the
streets, gaining speed with each passing second.
Verlaine looked around for something that might help him catch her. There was a rusty Zid
motorcycle parked nearby, its wires hanging loose. The engine was vastly different from his Ducati,
but in a matter of seconds, he’d hot-wired the bike, thrown his leg over the leather seat, and was
speeding after Eno. He held tight to the bars as he swerved through streets and turned back onto the
wide boulevard. He tried to get his bearings. He was driving west, toward the Neva. A minaret rose
against the purple sky.
A dull, throbbing pain seeped through his skull. The cut had scabbed over and, when he turned his
head, he felt it break open. Warm, fresh blood seeped across his skin.
Suddenly, Verlaine saw Bruno up ahead in the backseat of a taxi. He was follwing the twins,
trailing their sedan, gaining momentum by the second. Verlaine could see that he was close enough to
assist Bruno and, with the right balance of velocity and control, could cut the twins off. Glancing up,
he saw Eno, her black wings stretched against the sky. She was guarding the twins from above. If
Verlaine went after the taxi, it would draw her down so that he could fight her.
A rumbling caught Verlaine’s attention. He turned and found a pack of black MV Agusta
motorcycles behind him, moving in formation. Bruno leaned out of the the taxi’s window, gave a
quick wave of his hand, and the Agustas swarmed the twins’ sedan, their motors buzzing as they
swerved in and out of its path.
The sedan spun around, screeching to a halt, and Bruno’s taxi followed. Verlaine pulled over and
dropped the motorcycle.
“Nice timing,” Bruno said, looking Verlaine over and giving a low whistle. Verlaine must have
looked as bad as he felt. He’d be black and blue, no doubt, with his head stitched together like a
football. As he stepped toward Bruno, he realized that the bump to his head was making him unsure
on his feet.
The pack of Russian angelologists dismounted their motorcycles and flanked Bruno and Verlaine.
He’d never met their colleagues in Russia, but he’d heard about them often, mostly in jokes about
their use of heavy gear. They wore black gloves with steel knuckles embedded in the leather and
black steel helmets with angel wings painted in silver on the sides. He counted nine Russian angel
hunters, giving them a total of eleven angelologists. Under normal circumstances the numbers would
have been more than sufficient. But it was clear after his encounter with Eno that this wasn’t an
average hunt, and Eno and the twins weren’t average targets.
Just when Verlaine was beginning to feel confident that they could handle the situation, a new
creature jumped from the twins’ sedan. It was one of the Raiphim, an angelic order indigenous to