Angelopolis(82)

noticed, with a shudder, that Verlaine’s hair was encrusted with chunks of ice.

“You were supposed to stay out of trouble,” Bruno said.

Sipping the hot tea more slowly, Verlaine said, “I can take you to the Grigori twins.”

“Bad idea,” Yana said. “They’ve nearly killed you twice. I wouldn’t tempt fate.”

Bruno looked at Yana. “If the Grigoris are there, Eno is too.”

“Sneja is inside,” Verlaine said, looking to Bruno for support. “She’s running everything.”

“That much was obvious from the way she tried to kill you,” Yana said.

“How’s that?” Bruno asked, restraining himself from arguing with Yana. She’d just saved his life;

he owed it to her to give her the benefit of the doubt. Still, they’d been trying to corner Sneja Grigori

for decades. And she was there, on the train, waiting for them to take her.

“Sneja likes her victims frozen to the brink of death before she executes them,” Yana said. “The

actual slaughter is less messy that way.”

“Nice,” Verlaine said, his face going paler.

“So now that you’ve been scorched and frozen by the Grigoris,” Yana said, “that leaves only

drowning and being buried alive, if you’d like to cover all the elements. Believe me, you’ve pushed

your luck—and mine—enough. Sometimes these transports go awry, and when that happens, it’s best

to cut our losses. Besides, Bruno has his sights set much higher than a bunch of Nephilim.”

Verlaine gave Bruno a questioning look.

“We’re going to find Godwin,” Bruno said. And although Bruno understood the massive risk he

was taking; he knew that he would get this one chance to get inside the panopticon. He leaned against

the wall, his gaze falling over the frozen landscape. It would be many hours before they passed the

Ural Mountains into Asia, descending toward Chelyabinsk and its famous prison of angels.

Dr. Raphael Valko’s compound, Smolyan, Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria

Vera watched Azov closely, measuring his every gesture. She knew him well enough to see that he

was struggling to contain his emotions. He was mad, and that wasn’t something Vera saw often.

“You’ve known about this,” Azov said, his voice little more than a whisper. “And you’ve said

nothing all of these years.”

“Ah, but that is because nothing has worked as we expected it would,” Valko said.

“What went wrong?” Sveti asked.

“Evangeline was human,” Valko said. “Or so her mother believed her to be. Year after year,

Angela’s hope that her daughter’s angelic inheritance would reveal itself diminished. With every

extraction of her blood, her mother’s disappointment grew.”

Vera thought of the film she’d watched in the storage rooms of the Hermitage the previous morning

—the vials of blood labeled with various names. She understood now why Alexei’s and Lucien’s

blood had been stored away. “Angela extracted her own daughter’s blood?”

“She oversaw its extraction and testing, yes,” Valko said.

“She wasn’t afraid of putting Evangeline in danger?” Vera asked.

“It sounds as if there wasn’t anything about Evangeline’s blood to cause alarm,” Sveti said.

“Alas, you’re right about that,” Valko said. “At that time, Evangeline’s blood tested human. And

Angela, accepting that her child was ordinary, occupied herself with other projects. One in particular

became a kind of obsession for my daughter.”

“You mean the virus,” Vera said.

“Yes,” Valko said.

“It was an incredible accomplishment,” Vera said.

“I’m not sure that she was pleased by the virus in itself,” Valko said. “There was more to her plans

than simply the creation of an epidemic. A virus can be cured. Creatures can protect themselves from

contamination. Angela understood that the virus she’d engineered wasn’t enough. She wanted to

utterly destroy the Nephilim race. To do so she needed a stronger, more certain weapon.”

“This is why the Nephilim killed her,” Azov noted, his voice uncertain, as if it were still a surprise

to him that Angela was dead.

“Not exactly,” Valko said. “Recall, if you will, Tatiana’s egg in the Book of Flowers. I asked you

to interpret this aquarelle as a gateway to a higher purpose, something more elevated than a mere

recipe book for the medicine of Noah.”

“Yes, of course,” Sveti said. “Angela’s Jacob’s Ladder. Although I still don’t understand how this