Angelopolis(88)

be just a hole gaping in the side of the mountain like so many other caves he’d seen in his travels, but

of course it had been so much more. He would never forget the smile of triumph on Seraphina’s face

when she returned to Paris after the Second Angelic Expedition. She had found the opening to the

underworld, and she had brought back its most precious treasure. Of course, everything had changed

since her death. He’d stayed in Paris, remarried, raised a daughter, divorced, buried a daughter. Only

then, after Angela’s death, when the last of his connections to Paris was gone, had he made the trek to

the Devil’s Throat Cavern himself. For twenty-five years Valko had climbed the sheer rock face, the

sound of the waterfall crashing in his ears, and spied on the Watchers, waiting for the day when he

would return. For years his life had been in that secluded valley. He’d disguised himself so well that

nobody knew who he was or what he was doing. He’d married a Bulgarian woman, spoke Bulgarian

like a native, mixed with local men in the village bars, and done everything he could to fit in. If the

Nephilim had discovered his identity, he would be dead. But they hadn’t.

Leaning against the entrance of the cavern, he looked past his young comrades and through the

tangle of birch trees beyond, letting his mind drift to the hours ahead. He threw a rope ladder over the

ledge. Vera stepped to it, grabbed the first rung, and lowered herself down. The descent would be

painstaking and dangerous. The familiar sound of water bounced through the gorge, echoing, filling

the space with a deafening noise, and he wondered why Vera and Azov hadn’t asked for more

specific information about the layout of the Devil’s Throat, why they had trusted him about Lucien,

why they didn’t verify his story. It used to be that agents trusted no one.

Valko knew the mythology behind the cavern, but he also knew the cave as a geological formation.

He knew the depth and the general perimeters as precisely as the contour lines on a topographical

map; he recognized the sound of water that came from the river and the water that came from the

waterfall. Quickly he went, letting gravity take him downward. He counted each step, positioning his

feet carefully, delicately on the ladder rungs, adding them up. He looked over his shoulder, straining

to see in the swirling, infinite darkness. He knew that the noise would grow louder and louder as he

descended. As the shaft deepened, the darkness would become thick. He could see no farther than the

whites of his knuckles wrapped upon the ladder’s rungs, and yet he knew that soon he would reach the

bottom.

The Devil’s Throat Cavern, Smolyan, Bulgaria

As Vera followed Valko through the darkness, she saw a skeletal figure stretched out on the rock, its

pale arms crossed upon its chest. Seraphina Valko’s photographs of the dead Watcher had taken

Vera’s breath away when she’d first seen them a year earlier in Paris, and now here was the actual

angel, in the flesh, its skin giving the illusion of life, its golden hair curling in tendrils to its shoulders.

As they stood over its body, taking in its unearthly beauty, Vera felt a sense that she was following a

path created long before her birth.

“It looks alive,” Vera said, lifting the white metallic gown and rubbing the fabric between her

fingers.

“I wouldn’t touch it,” Valko said. “The bodies of angels weren’t meant to be touched. The level of

radioactivity may still be very high.”

Azov bent over the body. “But I thought that they couldn’t die.”

“Immortality is a gift that can be taken as easily as it is bequeathed,” Valko said. “Clematis

believed that the Lord struck the angel down as vengeance. It may be that angels live the way humans

do—in the shadow of their Creator, wholly dependent upon the whims of divinity.”

Valko, who had clearly seen the dead Watcher many times before, headed off into the cavern. Vera

followed the trembling glow of his flashlight into the cold, wet space. He stopped before a declivity

in the wall that, upon closer inspection, was a chiseled corridor that opened into a large room. In the

depths of the space, removed from the roar of water, there was light and movement, the soft scraping

of a pen on paper. A figure stood and walked toward them, his thin body barely discernible.

“Lucien?” Valko said, in little more than a whisper.

“What is it?” a soft voice said.

“Lucien, there are some people I’d like you to meet,” Valko said. “Do you mind if we come in?”

The angel hesitated, and then, as if realizing that he couldn’t refuse, stepped aside and let them pass