Angelopolis (7 page)

In the end their work had gone terribly wrong. Angela was murdered, Luca died alone and forgotten in America, their daughter was raised by nuns at St. Rose Convent—strangers, really—who hadn’t been able to protect her in the end. The reality of Evangeline as a fully formed angelic creature was the final blow to the once inviolable Valko legacy. For Bruno, the truth about Evangeline was a total shock to the system. Seeing her perched on the rooftop, her wings tucked behind her, had produced a chemical reaction, pure and simple. He’d repressed an instinctual desire to destroy her.

“To discover what Eno wants with Evangeline might take some digging,” Bruno said, finally answering Verlaine’s question. “Eno’s motives are never clear. She confounds the best of us.”

“I’m more interested in finding Evangeline than in theorizing about her abductor,” Verlaine said.

Suddenly Bruno wondered if his obsession with Eno tinted everything he did and said. “She works exclusively for the Grigoris. If she wants Evangeline, there’s something important going on.”

“This might have something to do with it,” Verlaine said, reaching into his backpack.

Bruno watched him unwrap a gaudy, gem-encrusted egg. It was clearly valuable but, in Bruno’s mind, a piece of kitsch that he wouldn’t have looked at twice under normal circumstances. “How’d you make it through security with that thing?”

Verlaine held the egg before Bruno’s eyes and said, “Watch this.” He pressed a tiny button and the egg split in two, springing open on an invisible hinge and revealing, tucked inside its center, another egg. This egg, in turn, split apart, revealing two small miniatures: an intricately constructed gold chariot and a cherub, its body enameled and jeweled and gleaming, as if rendered in oil paint and varnish. What was once compact as a stone had expanded, as if by some magic mechanism, into an intriguing diorama.

“Evangeline slipped it to me,” Verlaine said. “I was hoping you might know why.”

Bruno looked it over, unsure of what to make of it, and closed the contraption, feeling the cold metal click into place as each mechanism retracted. “I can’t tell you. But if there’s a connection, we’re going to the right place to find out.”

Bruno felt his stomach lift as the plane descended. Pushing up the window shade, he looked out through the warped lens of thick acrylic plastic. In the distance, beyond a haze of darkness, the lights of St. Petersburg sparkled. He strained to see the twist of the Neva and the dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, but could make out only a faint gradation of gray hovering at the edges of the lights, like smudges on an abstract painting. As the wheels hit the tarmac, and the plane bounced with the weight of the impact, Bruno could almost feel the density of the angelic population, as if their presence created another layer in the atmosphere. Eno was there, among these creatures. Turning to Verlaine he saw that his best hunter understood what they were up against. He would risk his life—he would risk everything—to find Evangeline.

Grigori mansion, Millionnaya Street, St. Petersburg

A
gainst his better judgment, Armigus left the human creature to scream. He knew it would be much less trouble to end its life quickly and be done with it. He had a dagger—a piece of sharpened bone that had been passed down for generations by the Grigori men—ready, he had the human’s hands tied and the plastic sheets ready to catch the blood, but the doorbell was ringing on the first floor, the sound echoing through the vast plaster and marble interior. As Armigus left the room the human looked at him, pleading, desperate. He wanted to die quickly, Armigus could see it, but there was no choice but to put a pause to this little amusement. It could be his brother back from Paris, after all. And if Axicore had to wait, he would be furious.

Armigus walked the long stretch of hallway from one side of the house to the other, passing an array of modern glass-and-steel furniture, a shelf filled with Tibetan copper bowls, and a collection of Shivas cast in bronze. The apartment had been occupied by a lesser branch of the imperial family before the revolution, a period the twins disliked, and so, in defiance of the stuffy nineteenth-century moldings and the elaborate marble floors, Axicore and Armigus filled the space with modern furniture, tatami mats, Japanese manga, folding silk screens—anything to dispel the musty air of the past.

They had the same tastes in everything. In conversation one twin would finish the other’s sentences. As children they would switch identities, so as to confuse their teachers and friends. When they were older they would take each other’s women to bed, sharing lovers without disclosing the truth to their partners. Indeed, Axicore and Armigus Grigori were identical in every way except one: Axicore’s right eye was green and his left eye blue, while Armigus’s left eye was green and his right eye was blue. When the twins faced each other, they appeared to be mirror images. When they were standing side by side, the colors of the eyes made it possible to distinguish them. Armigus had often wondered about this anomaly, something that marked no Grigori before or since. Perhaps they were different, more unique, somehow better than the others.

Sighing with annoyance, Armigus reached the door. Under normal circumstances his Anakim angel would take care of this for him, but he always dismissed the Anakim from the house when he held human beings there. The screaming and crying always spooked the Anakim, who were truly lower in the hierarchy of angelic beings in every sense of the word. They simply could not tolerate the preferences and habits of the Nephilim.

He felt the hot, sensual energy of an Emim angel before he actually saw Eno in the doorway. She slid her sunglasses into her hair and said, “Your brother asked me to come for you.”

Armigus stepped aside, letting Eno push past. She was as tall as Armigus, strong and dangerous. “He’d like me to help capture Sneja’s Nephil?”

“I have caught her already,” Eno said, giving him a haughty look, one that perfectly represented her feelings about Armigus. She preferred Axicore, thought him a true Nephil, and always reported to him. Armigus was just a secondary master, the one with a weakness for human beings. “Axicore is moving her to Russia now, but he needs your help. He wants you to speak with Sneja—to tell her that he’s got Evangeline—and to meet him in Siberia to finish the job.”

“What about Godwin?”

Eno blinked, clearly surprised that he would speak to her about the subject. The Grigori dealings with Godwin were confidential, not the kind of topic to be discussing with a mercenary angel, but Armigus wanted to win Eno’s confidence. He wanted her to like him. But she only thought he was weak. He could see it in her eyes.

“You will have to speak with your brother about that,” Eno said, her voice cold.

Walking to the center of the room, she paused under a glass sculpture suspended from the ceiling, its crystals catching light and scattering it over her dark skin, her black hair, the eerie yellow glow that surrounded her eyes. A cry rang through the room.

“You aren’t alone?” Eno asked, raising an eyebrow. Her long black tongue appeared at the side of her mouth, thick and wet as an eel.

“I’m in the middle of something,” Armigus said.

Eno met his eye and smiled, a sadistic look suffusing her face. “Armigus—do you have a human here?”

Armigus looked away, refusing to answer. Axicore didn’t approve of his appetite for human men, but Eno understood his preferences all too well.

“You know, Armigus, your brother needs you now. You haven’t the time for playing games. I would be happy to take care of the creature for you,” she said, stepping toward him. “More than happy.”

Armigus took the key to his bedroom from his pocket and placed it in Eno’s hand. She was doing him a favor—he hated finishing them off, hated the stink of the blood and human flesh—and yet he couldn’t help but feel as though he had been cheated. “Don’t leave a mess behind,” he whispered.

“You know me better than that,” Eno said, smiling.

Bracing himself, Armigus grabbed his jacket and hurried out the door, closing it before he could hear the sounds of Eno’s work.

Angelology Research Center, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

A
t that hour, with the sun rising at the edge of the city and the sky oozing a diaphanous mist, the oak tables were completely empty of scholars. Verlaine always found such places comforting, a reminder of who he had once been when he spent his days in quiet research, preparing classes and organizing notes for his next lecture. Indeed, the moment he and Bruno had set foot in the research center, and he heard the sound of their shoes on the polished floors, he felt his entire being relax, as if, after wandering in inhospitable territory, he had at last come to a place of safety.

A commotion in the hallway drew his attention as Vera Varvara walked briskly into the room, an air of crisp efficiency about her. He leaned down and kissed her twice, Parisian style, noting that her blue eyes didn’t settle on his but stared through him, as if they had never met before. He felt his cheeks go warm, and he wondered if it had been a good idea to have called her at all.

While she was the perfect agent to consult—her extensive knowledge of St. Petersburg and access to the angelological collection at the Hermitage was invaluable—he wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing him again. They’d met the year before at a conference in Paris, and spent the night together after having drinks at a bar in the fourteenth arrondissement, near the academy. The next morning they agreed that it had been a mistake, that they would simply pretend that the night hadn’t happened. They hadn’t spoken much since then. While he’d suspected that one day her professional savvy would be useful, he’d never imagined that he would be coming to Vera about Evangeline.

Verlaine stared at Vera, watching her move. She was as beautiful and brutally elegant as he remembered, but to his surprise he could not recall what it had been like to be with her in bed, what her body had felt like next to his. He could only summon forth the sensation of holding Evangeline, her presence like a vortex of white-blue snow, swirling and dancing around him as he tried to catch it.

Vera, however, hadn’t forgotten a thing: She suddenly turned to Verlaine, giving him a hard look, one that conveyed curiosity and complicity at once, and then glanced from Verlaine to Bruno. Registering that she and Verlaine weren’t alone, she assumed the expression of a disinterested colleague.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet us on such short notice,” Bruno said.

“It was quite a surprise to get your call.” Vera shook Bruno’s hand and gestured for them to sit at one of the tables. “Please, tell me what I can do to help you.”

“I’m not entirely sure if you can help,” Bruno said.

“Actually,” Verlaine said, cutting in, “we’re hoping you can give us some information.”

“With pleasure.” Vera moved her eyes over Verlaine until he felt his stomach turn. Details of their night together were beginning to come back to him.

Without trying to explain, he removed the jeweled egg from his pocket and turned it in his fingers as if it were a Rubik’s cube. With each twist of his wrist, he struggled to forget that this egg had been in Evangeline’s hands only hours before, and that the Nephilim had likely abducted her in hopes of obtaining it.

Vera took the egg from Verlaine, lifting it as if it might explode in her hand. “My God. Where did you get this?”

“You recognize it?” Bruno asked, clearly surprised by the intensity of her reaction.

“Yes.” Her expression softened as she grew thoughtful. “It’s Fabergé’s Cherub with Chariot Egg, made in 1888 for Empress Maria Feodorovna.” Vera ran her fingers over the enamel and, with expert movements, opened the egg, moving the hinges apart so that the golden mechanism creaked. As she removed the chariot and cherub figurine, Verlaine stepped behind her and examined it over her shoulder. The workmanship was exceptional: The sapphire eyes, the golden hair—every detail of the cherub had been perfectly rendered.

“What does it say on the sash?” Bruno asked.

“Grigoriev,” Vera said, reading the letters painted in Cyrillic. She paused, considering the word. “The patronymic of Grigori, meaning son of Grigori.”

Verlaine couldn’t help but think of Evangeline’s connection to the Grigoris: As the granddaughter of Percival Grigori, she was a descendant of one of the most vicious Nephilim families on record. “Is it possible that the egg could belong to the Grigori family?”

Vera gave him a weary look. “Grigori is an extremely common name in Russia.”

Bruno rolled his eyes. “It’s just a piece of tsarist bling, a nicely made bauble. Nothing deeper than that.”

“I don’t agree with your aesthetic sensibility,” Vera said. “Fabergé’s eggs are exquisite objects, almost perfect in their lack of practicality, whose sole purpose was to delight and surprise the recipient. Their seemingly impermeable exterior cracks to reveal another egg and then, at the center of this egg, a precious object, the surprise. The eggs are the most pure expression of art for art’s sake: beauty that reveals only itself.”

Verlaine liked the way Vera stood when she spoke, her posture that of a ballet dancer midstep, one arm moving with her voice, as if her ideas had been choreographed to match the rhythm of her body. Perhaps sensing the intensity of Verlaine’s gaze, she changed her stance.

“Go on,” Bruno said.

“The first Imperial Easter egg was constructed by Peter Carl Fabergé for the Russian tsar in 1885, and delighted Empress Maria Feodorovna, who had seen similar creations in her childhood at the Danish court. Fabergé was commissioned to create a new and original egg each year. The jeweler was given the artistic license to design the eggs according to his imagination, and, as you can probably guess, they grew more elaborate—and more expensive—with time. The only requirement of Fabergé was that there must be a new egg each Easter and that each must contain a surprise.”

Vera took the chariot and the cherub and placed it on one of the oak reading tables. It seemed to Verlaine like a precious windup toy that might, with the twist of a key, twitch into motion.