Angelopolis(47)

creature was stunned, to lock the collar in one strong gesture. Once it was in place, the angel would

sink into a state of drowsy submission, allowing the angelologist to take it into custody with ease.

Verlaine followed this procedure perfectly. Yet, as he moved to secure the collar, Eno struck back.

He fell, knocking the wind from his lungs. The collar slid from his hands, skittering across the

pavement. Verlaine couldn’t breathe. He was paralyzed.

In a violent strike, Eno pinned Verlaine to the ground, pressing the stiletto of her boot into the curve

of his neck, as if to puncture his throat. She knelt over him, placing her hands over his chest, her

wrists meeting above his heart. A shock of electricity moved through him, and a low, grating sound

filled Verlaine’s hearing. It wasn’t a sound he recognized, and it was impossible to tell if the noise

was something generated in his own mind—the mental clatter of terror ringing in his ears—or if Eno

was causing this bizarre music to move through him. Although he had studied the Nephilim’s use of

vibration to stun human victims—it was one of their many tactics to derange the senses before a kill

—Verlaine had never heard of an Emim angel having the power to do so.

Verlaine struggled, pushing against her, feeling her wings take hold of him as she pressed her hands

harder onto his chest. He could feel a sharp, vibrating pulse pounding over the beating of his heart.

He had seen the victims of angelic electroattacks. Their bodies were charred to black cinders. A

wave of fear and panic struck him. Eno was going to kill him.

Heat slithered over his skin, as if he had fallen into a pit of boiling oil. He might have screamed—

he heard his voice in his ears, but had no sensation of using it. Somewhere in the distance there were

footfalls, gunshots, the echo of Bruno’s voice. A brilliance subsumed him, and in a burst of heat, the

strength of which overwhelmed his body and mind, Verlaine lost consciousness.



The Fourth Circle

GREED

Burgas, Black Sea Coast, Bulgaria

Vera watched the sky as the plane descended. The flight from St. Petersburg to Burgas had been four

hours of relentless turbulence, the Cessna twisting in sharp currents of air. Nevertheless, she had

fallen asleep the moment the plane took off. The dips and jags of the plane blended into the liquidity

of her dreams. She couldn’t remember what she dreamed but felt a weightlessness at the back of her

mind, distant yet vivid.

The airport was a small, regional outpost with a single jet parked on the tarmac. She took in the

concrete building, the swaths of muddy lots around the airfield, the barbed wire spiraling at the top of

the chain-link fence. She had never been to Azov’s Black Sea outpost before and had seized this

opportunity to see for herself what the great expeditions to Bulgaria—the first taken in the twelfth

century and the second during the Second World War—might have been like. She found that the

airport looked tired, run-down, as if it were recovering from a long, abusive winter. The sky,

however, was filled with a lingering spring light. Vera slid on her sunglasses and followed the other

passengers.

She was greeted at the end of the runway by a pair of security guards and ushered through a mesh

gate, where a black Mercedes jeep waited, ostentatious and anonymous at once. She hadn’t been

asked for her passport: Her presence in Bulgaria would not be registered. Officially, she had never

entered the country.

A woman with black hair and deeply tanned skin greeted her from the driver’s seat. She introduced

herself as Sveti and told her that Bruno had called hours before about Vera’s arrival and her

requirements while in Bulgaria. She said, “If you’re hungry, help yourself.”

Vera opened a wicker basket filled with cucumber and tomato sandwiches, an egg and feta cheese

pastry Sveti called banitza, stuffed grape leaves, bottles of Kamenitza beer and Gorna Banya mineral

water. She couldn’t imagine eating much after her morning with Nadia but nonetheless spread a cloth

napkin on her lap and took a sandwich.

“We are currently outside of Burgas,” Sveti said, pulling away from the airport, the tires kicking

gravel as she turned onto a paved road. “About twenty-five minutes from Sozopol. Once we arrive I

will take you to the Angelological Society of Bulgaria Dive Center, where we will meet with Dr.

Azov. Our outpost has been here for years, but somehow we’ve managed to stay off the radar. He’s

been doing work nobody could dream existed. And yet the rest of the world has never come calling

before. You are the first foreign angelologist in ages to visit us.”

Vera stared out the window as they drove through the city of Burgas, gas stations and a