Angelopolis(5)

She crossed the street as he grew near and, without giving it a second thought, he fell into step

behind her, following her as he would any other target. He wondered if she could sense him behind,

feel his eyes upon her. She must have known he was there and purposely led him onward, because she

never moved too far ahead, but never allowed him to get too close either. Soon he was close enough

to see her reflection appear and disappear in the glass of a parked van, her image silvery, wavering,

fluid as a mirage. As the image stabilized he saw that her hair had been cropped in a messy pageboy

and she seemed to be wearing dark makeup. She could be any one of the thousands of young women

walking through Paris, but her disguise didn’t fool Verlaine. He knew the real Evangeline.

As she increased her pace, he struggled to keep up. The streets were packed with people;

Evangeline could disappear easily, in an instant, washing away in the swirl of the crowd. In all the

hunts in which he’d participated, he had done his job impeccably. He followed, captured, and then

imprisoned the creatures without question. But everything about this chase was different. He wanted

to catch her, but he couldn’t follow the usual protocol if he did. Most troubling of all, he only wanted

to talk to her, to understand what had happened in New York. He wanted an explanation. He felt he

deserved that much.

Verlaine felt the soles of his favorite shoes—a pair of brown leather wing tips he’d worn for years

—slipping with each step. A shiver of fear moved through him, gathering into a solid ball in his

stomach at the thought of losing her again. He knew that, if she chose, she could easily outrun him.

Indeed, she could open her wings and fly away. He had watched her do it before. The last time he had

seen her she’d lifted herself away from him, moving high into the vault of the sky, her wings bright

under the moon, a beautiful monster among the stars.

He hadn’t told anyone about this—not the angelologists who had been part of the New York

mission and not the men and women who certified him as he passed through his courses at the

academy. Evangeline’s true identity had remained his secret, and his silence had made him complicit

in her deception. His silence was the only gift he could give her, but that gift had left him feeling like

a traitor. He’d lied to everyone. Earlier, as he stood at the crime scene, he couldn’t look Bruno in the

eyes.

Verlaine hated the feeling. He’d spent too many years hunting the creatures, worked too long and

too hard to capture them, to be so shaken. No matter what had happened between them, years had

passed. He was a different man. If he caught Evangeline, he would have to capture her. He had to

remember what she was and what she was capable of doing to him. If he caught her, he would take

her into custody. If she attacked him, he would fight. He needed to move fast, to put his feelings aside.

He needed to convince himself that she was just another angel and this was just another routine hunt.

In the distance the lights of the Eiffel Tower glimmered against the night sky, bright as a

constellation fallen to earth. Verlaine ran, his hand trembling as he reached for his gun. Drawing it

from his belt, he switched it on. With its two hundred volts of electricity, the gun was powerful

without being lethal. If placed over the furcula of an angel, and the shot directed into the solar plexus,

the creature would be stunned for hours. He didn’t want to use force, but he wasn’t going to let

Evangeline slip away again.

Limousine, Pont de l’Alma, above the Seine, Paris

Axicore Grigori peered through the smoky glass of the limousine window. It was a clear spring

night, with the streets filled with people, which made it very unlikely that he would leave the dark

enclosure of the car. He detested Homo sapiens, and the thought of getting out into the soup of

humanity made his skin crawl. When he had to venture out among people, he kept his distance. He

didn’t walk among them, he didn’t eat in their restaurants, he traveled in a private jet. He never so

much as touched the hand of a human being without feeling deeply, essentially violated. The very idea

that his ancestors had been attracted to such vile beings filled him with wonder. What on earth, he

wondered, looking at the people walking by, had the Watchers been thinking? How his twin brother,

Armigus, had managed to remain in Russia while Axicore found himself on a filthy Paris bridge like

some common Gibborim was beyond him.

His great-aunt Sneja Grigori believed that one of these repulsive creatures, a young woman named

Evangeline, was the granddaughter of her deceased son, Percival. It all seemed so far-fetched to

Axicore—even more so after his most trusted mercenary angel had observed the subject in question