plant from complete extinction. Humanity has—over the millennia—cultivated and revived the rose.
If we hadn’t, we would be living in a world without roses. The same can be said for all of the
flowers listed in Noah’s catalog of seeds. It is through the human preference for flowers that many of
these remain with us. It is a wonder that silphium, which was once so important, nearly died out.”
“Nearly?” Vera said. “I thought it was extinct?”
Azov smiled. “It is extinct,” he said. “Except for one or two remaining seeds.”
Vera stared at Azov, taking in the meaning of what he had said. If they had this plant, it would be
possible to create the formula—whatever it was. “Is the silphium among your seed collection?”
“It’s here,” Azov said. He opened a tiny drawer and removed a metal box. He unfastened the catch
and lifted a silk pouch. It was ominously airy, as if nothing at all were stored inside. He upended the
pouch and a single seed—yellowish brown with specks of green—rolled onto the table. “There is
only one left in my care,” Azov said. “The other seed was given to Dr. Raphael Valko in 1985.”
“Do you think he knew about this album, and about this formula in particular?” Sveti asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Azov muttered, as he paged through the book. “The scope of Angela’s work was
no secret to him, and he certainly knew that she and I were in close contact before her death. But
Raphael never mentioned her when I delivered the seed to him.”
“I fail to see what Raphael Valko has to do with any of this,” Vera said. “Though I have to confess,
I am dying to meet him. Especially if he has some connection to this elixir.”
“The real question is: Can we mix this potion?” Sveti asked.
“And if such a potion will do anything at all to the Nephilim,” Azov said, returning his gaze to the
album. “If we take the flower petals from behind the wax paper and grind them together in the correct
proportions, and in the order designated in Rasputin’s equations, we would have the base for a
chemical reaction. That leaves silphium, which we might be able to grow, although in minute
quantities.”
“More difficult is the last ingredient,” Sveti said, pointing to a page in the album. “This calls for a
metal that was not even verified to exist during Rasputin’s lifetime.”
“I know what it is that you’re going to say,” Vera said. “It is a metal that was used in great
quantities before the Flood but had virtually disappeared after the death of Noah. It was given various
names by Enoch, Noah, and others in the ancient world who had contact with it. It was rediscovered
and classified by Raphael Valko, who renamed it Valkine.” Vera thought this over for a moment and
said, “There hasn’t been a piece of Valkine available for more than sixty years.”
“If you exclude the Valkine lyre that was recovered in New York in 1999, then you’re right. The
last person to have even a tiny amount was Raphael Valko himself. He came across significant
quantities of the substance at the beginning of the twentieth century, when he took possession of one of
the celestial instruments, a beautiful lyre that was believed to have been the very instrument Orpheus
played. Before he found the lyre there were speculations about the substance that made up the
instruments. Some angelologists believed they were made of gold, others of copper. No one knew for
certain. And so Valko took a file and scraped shavings from the base of the lyre, analyzed the metal,
and came to understand that it was an entirely unique material, one that had never been studied or
classified. He named it Valkine. While the lyre itself was packed up and sent to America for
safekeeping during the war, the shavings were his. He kept them for some years, and then, the story
goes, he melted them down and made three lyre pendants.”
“Dr. Raphael Valko fashioned the pendants. He must have more of the metal, even if it is just a
trace amount,” Vera said.
Azov stood and slid on a brown leather jacket. “There’s only one way to find out for sure,” he
said, putting his hand on Vera’s shoulder and leading her from the room.
The Fifth Circle
FURY
Trans-Siberian Railway
Verlaine’s ears rang with a steady, grating buzz. He opened his eyes and saw an indistinct space,
foggy and insubstantial, its gray walls bleeding into a gray ceiling, giving him the impression that he’d
awoken in a cave. His whole body was consumed in heat, so much so that even the crisp cotton sheets