Angelopolis(84)

said.

“Then I shudder to imagine what they would do upon hearing the next conclusion we must draw,”

Vera said. “With his archangelic father, Gabriel, and his Nephilistic mother, Alexandra, Lucien is

descended from the exalted and the damned.”

“A true Manichaean,” Sveti said.

“Throw Percival Grigori—Evangeline’s other grandfather—into the mix, and you have a truly

unholy cocktail,” Vera said.

“Enough,” Valko said, his voice steely. “You’re speaking about my daughter’s work, all that she

lived and died for. I won’t let you trifle with her legacy.”

“Evangeline was her work?” Vera asked, incredulous to hear Valko speak of Evangeline so coldly,

as if she were little more than a thought experiment.

“The conception of Evangeline was the most brilliant and dangerous risk of Angela’s career,”

Valko said. “Angela knew what she was doing and did it with purpose.” He folded his arms over his

chest and looked at them, his features hardening. “The child was not some foolhardy whim. My

daughter put her own body on the line, as well as her safety, to produce Evangeline.”

“But you said before that Angela and Lucien were in love,” Azov said.

“That was an unexpected consequence.”

“What did she expect to happen?” Vera asked, realizing with horror that Angela was more

calculating than she could have ever imagined. “Do you mean to say that she was fully aware of what

she was doing? What did she expect Evangeline to become?”

“The ultimate weapon,” Valko said. “A weapon that derived from the natural hierarchy of angelic

beings. There are the spheres of heavenly creatures—the archangels, seraphim, cherubim—and then

there are the spheres of devils, fallen angels, the creatures disowned by heaven, demons. Angela

knew these distinctions intimately. She knew the power of an angel must be measured against the

power of another angel. She knew that false creation—the genetic modeling of automatons, golems,

clones, or any such engineered animate being—would not work, as it went against the divine

hierarchy of beings. Angela also knew that in order to defeat a creature of human and angelic origin—

a monster of the heavenly order—she must create another, more powerful creature. And so she

attempted to engineer a new species of angel, one that was stronger than the Nephilim.”

Azov’s voice strained as he said, “You make it sound like Angela was some kind of Frankenstein

constructing a monster.”

“My daughter did something even more bold,” Valko said, and Vera could not tell if he was proud

of or ashamed by his daughter’s work.

“Are you really saying,” Azov said, “that Angela created a child to be used a weapon?”

“‘Weapon’ is perhaps not the ideal way to classify the girl,” Valko said. “Examine her name. It

contains the seeds of her destiny. She was called Evangeline. Eve Angel. The child was to be the new

Eve, an original creature born to reconstruct a new world.”

“Semantics aside, it is difficult to believe that Angela used her own child as a kind of genetic

experiment,” Azov said, his voice filled with doubt.

“In the end, it didn’t matter,” Valko said. “The experiment failed.”

“Because Evangeline turned out to be human?” Vera asked.

“A female human with ruddy, opaque skin, crimson blood, a propensity toward illness, a navel,

and a startling resemblance to her human grandmother, Gabriella.” Valko looked away and his voice

grew quiet as he said, “And so Angela tried again.”

“What?” Vera said and, realizing that she was nearly screaming, changed her tone. “I don’t

understand. A lot of time passed before Angela could know that Evangeline wasn’t the creature she

wanted to create. How on earth did she try again?”

“Angela went back to St. Petersburg in 1983 and renewed her relationship with the angel who had

fathered Evangeline. She never told Lucien of Evangeline’s existence, nor did she reveal her reasons

for renewing the affair. I don’t think Angela had any notion that she was being heartless or even

irresponsible. She did it all with the belief that her second child would be a boy and that he would be

the warrior angel she had been waiting for. With the birth of her son, her work against the Nephilim

would be finished.”

“And did she succeed?” Vera asked.

Valko said quietly, “My daughter was pregnant when she was killed. During the autopsy it was

discovered that an egg had formed in Angela’s womb. The child was a boy. I saw his corpse. His