Angelopolis(9)

could see the iridescence of her skin in the shadows, the strange colored glow that appeared around

her hair. He walked around her, studying her as if she were a winged statue in the Louvre, and he

wondered what it felt like to live outside of time. Evangeline wouldn’t age like human beings, and she

wouldn’t die for many hundreds of years. When Verlaine was an old man, Evangeline would be

exactly the way he saw her now—as young and lovely as a figure cut from marble. He would die and

she would remember his existence as something brief and insignificant. He realized now that she was

more special than he could have ever guessed. He could hardly breathe. Evangeline was a thing of

wonder, a miracle playing itself out before his eyes.

“Now do you understand why I cannot go to them?” Evangeline whispered.

“Come here,” Verlaine said, and to his surprise, Evangeline stepped toward him. He could feel the

movement of the air swirling around her wings, smell the sweet fragrance of her skin. Her wrist,

when he took it to feel her pulse, was cold as ice and slicked with the plasma characteristic of the

Nephilim. He wanted, suddenly, to bring his lips to her skin. Instead, he pressed his finger to her vein.

Her pulse was low and shallow, almost nonexistent.

“Your blood?”

“Blue.”

“Eyesight?”

“Better than perfect.”

“Temperature?”

“Thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit, sometimes lower.”

“It’s strange,” he said. “You have both human and Nephil characteristics. Your heartbeat is

extraordinarily slow—less than two beats per minute, much slower than the average Nephil rate.” He

squeezed her arm. “And you’re practically frozen. But your skin is flushed. You look every bit as

human as I do.”

Evangeline took a breath, as if bracing herself. “Have you killed many creatures like me?”

“I have never in my life encountered a creature like you, Evangeline.”

“The way you say that,” she said, holding his gaze, “makes it seem like you understand what I’ve

become.”

“Everything I’ve done, all the hunting, has been so that I could understand you.”

“Then tell me,” Evangeline asked, her voice trembling. “What am I?”

Verlaine looked at her, aware that his measured caution was giving way to the strength of his

feelings. At last he said, “It is clear from your wings—their color and size and strength—that you are

one of the elite angels. You are a Grigori, a descendant of the great Semyaza, granddaughter of

Percival, great-grandaughter of Sneja. But you are human, too. You are incredible, a kind of miracle.”

He stepped away and looked at Evangeline’s wings once more, touching the gooseflesh under the

feathers. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to know,” he said. “What does it feel like to fly?”

“I wish I could explain it,” she said. “The sensation of weightlessness, the lightness, the buoyancy,

the feeling that I might evaporate in a current of air. When I was human, I could not have imagined

what it was like to step into a void, to fall fast and then sweep up, suddenly, into the wind. At times it

feels like I belong less on the earth than to the sky, that I must recalibrate all of my movements just to

remain earthbound. I used to fly out over the Atlantic, where I wouldn’t be seen, and I would go for

miles and miles without tiring. Sometimes the sun would rise and I would see my reflection in the

water and think that I should keep going. I would have to force myself to go back.”

“It’s in your nature to fly,” Verlaine said. “But what about the other characteristics of the

Nephilim? Did you experience those as well?”

Her expression changed, and Verlaine could see at once that she was afraid of her capabilities.

“My senses are slightly altered—everything is stronger and sharper; I don’t need food or water in the

way I used to—but I have none of the desires attributed to the Nephilim. I am physically different, but

my inner life is unaltered. My spirit has not changed. I may have inherited the body of a demon,”

Evangeline said softly, “but I would never willingly become one.”

Verlaine touched the pendant resting against her skin. It was so cold that a sheet of frost covered

the metal. His finger melted a watery print on its surface. “You’re freezing.”

“Did you expect my skin to be like yours?” Evangeline asked.

“I’ve been in crowds of Nephilim; I’ve spoken to them in close proximity. You can feel the ice

running in their veins—they are cold, but it is a different kind of coldness, like the dead walking