Angelology Read online

  With a whoosh of hot, gaseous air, a semi slowed and stopped a hundred yards or so ahead, the brakes creaking as the tires ground to a halt. The passenger door was flung open, and Verlaine broke into a run toward the brightly lit cab. The driver was a fat man with a great tangled beard and a baseball cap who eyed Verlaine sympathetically. “Where you headed?”

  “New York City,” Verlaine said, already basking in the warmth of the cab’s heater.

  “I’m not going that far, but I can drop you in the next town, if you’d like.”

  Verlaine tucked his hand deep into his coat, obscuring it from view. “Where’s that?” he asked.

  “About fifteen miles south in Milton,” the driver said, looking him over. “Looks like you’ve had a hell of a day. Hop in.”

  They drove for fifteen minutes before the truck driver pulled over, letting him off on a quaint, snowy main street with a stretch of small shops. The street was utterly deserted, as if the entire town had shut down due to the snowstorm. The shop windows were dark and the parking lot before the post office empty. A small tavern on a corner, a beer sign illuminated in the window, gave the only sign of life.

  Verlaine checked his pockets, feeling for his wallet and keys. He’d buttoned the envelope of cash into an interior pocket of his sport jacket. Removing the envelope, he checked to be sure he hadn’t lost the money. To his relief, it was all there. His anger grew, however, at the thought of Grigori. What had he been doing, working for a guy who would track him down, bust up his car, and scare the hell out of him? Verlaine was beginning to wonder if he’d been crazy for getting involved with Percival Grigori at all.

  The Grigori penthouse, Upper East Side, New York City

  The Grigori family had acquired the penthouse in the late 1940s from the debt-ridden daughter of an American tycoon. It was large and magnificent, much too big for a bachelor with an aversion to large parties, and so it had come as something of a relief when Percival’s mother and Otterley began to occupy the upper floors. When he had lived there alone, he had spent hours alone playing billiards, the doors closed to the movement of servants brushing through the corridors. He would draw the heavy green velvet drapes, turn the lamps low, and drink scotch as he aligned shot after shot, aiming the cue and slamming the polished balls into netted pockets.

  As time passed, he remodeled various rooms of the apartment but left the billiard room exactly as it had been in the 1940s—slightly tattered leather furniture, the transmitter-tube radio with Bakelite buttons, an eighteenth-century Persian rug, an abundance of musty old books filling the cherrywood shelves, hardly any of which he had attempted to read. The volumes were purely decorative, admired for their age and value. There were calf-bound volumes pertaining to the origins and exploits of his many relations—histories, memoirs, epic novels of battle, romances. Some of these books had been shipped from Europe after the war; others were acquired from a venerable book dealer in the neighborhood, an old friend of the family transplanted from London. The man had a sharp sense for what the Grigori family most desired—tales of European conquest, colonial glory, and the civilizing power of Western culture.

  Even the distinctive smell of the billiard room remained the same—soap and leather polish, a faint hint of cigar. Percival still relished whiling away the hours there, calling every so often for the maid to bring him a fresh drink. She was a young Anakim female who was wonderfully silent. She would place a glass of scotch next to him and sweep the empty glass away, making him comfortable with practiced efficiency. With a flick of his wrist, he would dismiss the servant, and she would disappear in an instant. It pleased him that she always left quietly, closing the wide wooden doors behind her with a soft click.

  Percival maneuvered himself onto a stuffed armchair, swirling the scotch in its cut-crystal glass. He straightened his legs—slowly, gently—onto an ottoman. He thought of his mother and her complete disregard for his efforts in getting them this far. That he had obtained definite information about St. Rose Convent should have given her faith in him. Instead Sneja had instructed Otterley to oversee the creatures she’d sent upstate.

  Taking a sip of scotch, Percival tried to telephone his sister. When Otterley did not pick up, he checked his watch, annoyed. She should have called by now.

  For all her faults, Otterley was like their father—punctual, methodical, and utterly reliable under pressure. If Percival knew her, she had consulted with their father in London and had drawn up a plan to contain and eliminate Verlaine. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if his father had outlined the plan from his office, giving Otterley whatever she needed to execute his wishes. Otterley was his father’s favorite. In his eyes she could do nothing wrong.

  Looking at his watch again, Percival saw that only two minutes had passed. Perhaps something had happened to warrant Otterley’s silence. Perhaps their efforts had been thwarted. It wouldn’t be the first time they had been lured into a seemingly innocuous situation only to be cornered.

  He felt his legs pulsing and shaking, as if the muscles rebelled against repose. He took another sip of scotch, willing it to calm him, but nothing worked when he was in such a state. Leaving his cane behind, Percival drew himself up from the chair and hobbled to a bookshelf, where he removed a calf-bound volume and placed it gently upon the billiard table. The spine creaked when he pressed the cover open, as if the binding might pop apart. Percival had not opened The Book of Generations in many, many years, not since the marriage of one of his cousins had sent him searching for family connections on the bride’s side—it was always awkward to arrive at a wedding and be at a loss for who mattered and who did not, especially when the bride was a member of the Danish royal family.

  The Book of Generations was an amalgamation of history, legend, genealogy, and prediction pertaining to his kind. All Nephilistic children received an identical calf-bound volume at the end of their schooling, a kind of parting gift. The stories told of battle, of the founding of countries and kingdoms, of the binding together in pacts of loyalty, of the Crusades, of the knighthoods and quests and bloody conquests—these were the great stories of Nephilistic lore. Percival often wished that he had been born in those times, when their actions were not so visible, when they were able to go about their business quietly, without the danger of being monitored. Their power had been able to grow with the aid of silence, each victory building upon the one that came before. The legacy of his ancestors was all there, recorded in The Book of Generations.

  Percival read the first page, filled with bold script. There was a list of names documenting the sprawling history of the Nephilistic bloodline, a catalog of families that began at the time of Noah and branched into ruling dynasties. Noah’s son Japheth had migrated to Europe, his children populating Greece, Parthia, Russia, and northern Europe and securing their family’s dominance. Percival’s family was descended directly from Javan, Japheth’s fourth son, the first to colonize the “Isles of the Gentiles,” which some took to mean Greece and others believed to be the British Isles. Javan had six brothers, whose names were recorded in the Bible, and a number of sisters, whose names were not recorded, all of whom created the basis of their influence and power throughout Europe. In many ways The Book of Generations was a recapitulation of the history of the world. Or, as modern Nephilim preferred to think, the survival of the fittest.

  Looking over the list of families, Percival saw that their influence had once been absolute. In the past three hundred years, however, Nephilistic families had fallen into decline. Once there had been a balance between human and Nephilim. After the Flood they’d been born in almost equal numbers. But Nephilim were deeply attracted to humans and had married into human families, causing the genetic dilution of their most potent qualities. Now Nephilim possessing predominantly human characteristics were common, while those who had pure angelic traits were rare.

  With thousands of humans born for every one Nephilim, there was some debate among good families about the relevance of their human-born
relations. Some wished to exclude them, push them further into the human realm, while others believed in their value, or at least their use to the larger cause. Cultivating relations with the human members of Nephilim families was a tactical move, one that might yield great results. A child born to Nephilim parents, without the slightest trace of angelic traits, might in turn produce a Nephilistic offspring. It was an uncommon occurrence, to be sure, but not unheard of To address this possibility, the Nephilim observed a tiered system, a caste relating not to wealth or social status—although these criteria mattered as well—but to physical traits, to breeding, to a resemblance to their ancestors, a group of angels called the Watchers. While humans carried the genetic potential to create a Nephilistic child, the Nephilim themselves embodied the angelic ideal. Only a Nephilistic being could develop wings. And Percival’s had been the most magnificent anyone had seen in half a millennium.

  He turned the pages of The Book of Generations, stopping randomly at a middle section of the book. There was an etching of a noble merchant dressed in velvets and silks, a sword cocked in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. An endless procession of women and slaves knelt around him, awaiting his command, and a concubine stretched out upon a divan at his side, her arms draped over her body. Caressing the picture, Percival read a one-line biography of the merchant describing him “as an elusive nobleman who organized fleets to all corners of the uncivilized world, colonizing wilderness and organizing the natives.” So much had changed in the past three hundred years, so many parts of the globe subdued. The merchant would not recognize the world they lived in today.

  Turning to another page, Percival happened upon one of his favorite tales in the book, the story of a famous uncle on his father’s side—Sir Arthur Grigori, a Nephilim of great wealth and renown whom Percival recalled as a marvelous storyteller. Born in the early seventeenth century, Sir Arthur had made wise investments in many of the nascent shipping companies of the British Empire. His faith in the East India Company alone had brought him enormous profit—as his manor house and his cottage and his farmlands and his city apartments could well attest. While he was never directly involved in overseeing his business ventures abroad, Percival knew that his uncle had undertaken journeys around the globe and had amassed a great collection of treasures. Travel had always given him great pleasure, especially when he explored the more exotic corners of the planet, but his primary motive for distant excursion had been business. Sir Arthur had been known for his Svengali-like ability to convince humans to do all he asked of them. Percival arranged the book in his lap and read: Sir Arthur’s ship arrived just weeks after the infamous uprising of May 1857. From the seas to the Gangetic Plain, in Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior, the Revolt spread, wreaking discord among the hierarchies that governed the land. Peasants overtook their masters, killing and maiming the British with sticks and sabers and whatever weapons they could make or steal to suit their treachery. In Kanpur it was reported that two hundred European women and children were massacred in a single morning, while in Delhi peasants spread gunpowder upon the streets until they appeared covered in pepper. One imbecilic fellow lit a match for his bidi, blowing all and sundry to pieces.

  Sir Arthur, seeing that the East India Company had fallen into chaos and fearing that his profits would be affected, called the Governor-General to his apartments one afternoon to discuss what might be done between them to rectify the terrible events. The Governor-General, a portly, pink man with a penchant for chutney, arrived in the hottest hour of the day, a flock of children about him—one holding the umbrella, another holding a fan, and yet another balancing a glass of iced tea upon a tray. Sir Arthur received him with the shades drawn, to keep away the glare of both the sun and curious passersby.

  “I must say, Governor-General,” Sir Arthur began, “a revolt is no great greeting.”

  “No, sir,” the Governor-General replied, adjusting a polished gold monocle over a bulbous blue eye. “And it is no great farewell, either.”

  Seeing that they understood one another very well, the men discussed the matter. For hours they dissected the causes and effects of the revolt. In the end Sir Arthur had a suggestion. “There must be an example made,” he said, drawing a long cigar from a balsam box and lighting it with a lighter, an imprint of the Grigori family crest etched upon its side. “It is essential to drive fear into their hearts. One must create a spectacle that will terrify them into compliance. Together we will choose a village. When we are through with them, there will be no more revolts.”

  While the lesson Sir Arthur taught the British soldiers was well known in Nephilistic circles—indeed, they had been practicing such fear-generating tactics privately for many hundreds of years—it was rarely used on such a large group. Under Sir Arthur’s deft command, the soldiers rounded up the people of the chosen village—men, women, and children—and brought them to the market. He chose a child, a girl with almond eyes, silken black hair, and skin the color of chestnuts. The girl gazed curiously at the man, so tall and fair and gaunt, as if to say, Even among the peculiar-looking British, this man is odd. Yet she followed after him, obedient.

  Oblivious to the stares of the natives, Sir Arthur led the child before the prisoners of war—as the villagers were now called—lifted her into his arms, and deposited her into the barrel of a loaded cannon. The barrel was long and wide, and it swallowed the child entirely—only her hands were visible as they clung tight to the iron rim, holding it as if it were the top of a well into which she might sink.

  “Light the fuse,” Sir Grigori commanded. As the young soldier, his fingers trembling, struck a match, the girl’s mother cried out from the crowd.

  The explosion was the first of many that morning. Two hundred village children—the exact number of British killed in the Kanpur massacre—were led one by one to the cannon. The iron grew so hot that it charred the fingers of the soldiers dropping the heavy bundles of wiggling flesh, all hair and fingernails, into the shaft. Restrained at gunpoint, the villagers watched. Once the bloody business was through, the soldiers turned their muskets upon the villagers, ordering them to clean the market courtyard. Pieces of their children hung upon the tents and bushes and carts. Blood stained the earth orange.

  News of the horror soon spread to the nearby villages and from those villages to the Gangetic Plain, to Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior. The Revolt, as Sir Arthur Grigori had foretold, quieted.

  Percival’s reading was interrupted by the sound of Sneja’s voice as she leaned over his shoulder. “Ah, Sir Arthur,” she said, the shadow of her wings falling over the pages of the book. “He was one of the finest Grigoris, my favorite of your father’s brothers. Such valor! He secured our interests across the globe. If only his end had been as glorious as the rest of his life.”

  Percival knew that his mother was referring to Uncle Arthur’s sad and pathetic demise. Sir Arthur had been one of the first in their family to contract the illness that now afflicted Percival. His once-glorious wings had withered to putrid, blackened nubs, and after a decade of terrible suffering his lungs had collapsed. He had died in humiliation and pain, succumbing to the disease in the fifth century of life, a time when he should have been enjoying his retirement. Many had believed the illness to be the result of his exposure to various lower breeds of human life—the wretched natives in the various colonial ports—but the truth of the matter was that the Grigoris did not know the origin of the illness. They knew only that there may be a way to cure it.

  In the 1980s Sneja had come into possession of a human scientist’s body of work devoted to the therapeutic properties of certain varieties of music. The scientist had been named Angela Valko and was the daughter of Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko, one of the most renowned angelologists working in Europe. According to Angela Valko’s theories, there was a way to restore Percival, and all their kind, to angelic perfection.

  As was her wont, Sneja appeared to be reading
her son’s mind. “Despite your best efforts to sabotage your own cure, I believe that your art historian has pointed us in the right direction.”

  “You’ve found Verlaine?” Percival asked, closing The Book of Generations and turning to his mother. He felt like a child again, wishing to win Sneja’s approval. “Did he have the drawings?”

  “As soon as we hear from Otterley, we will know for certain,” Sneja said, taking The Book of Generations from Percival and paging through it. “Clearly we overlooked something during our raids. But make no mistake, we will find the object of our search. And you, my angel, will be the first to benefit from its properties. After you are cured, we will be the saviors of our kind.”

  “Magnificent,” Percival said, imagining his wings and how lush they would be once they had returned. “I will go to the convent myself. If it is there, I want to be the one to find it.”

  “You are too feeble.” Sneja glanced at the glass of scotch. “And drunk. Let Otterley and your father handle this. You and I will stay here.”

  Sneja tucked The Book of Generations under her arm and, kissing Percival on the cheek, left the billiard room.

  The thought of being trapped in New York City during one of the most important moments of his life enraged him. Taking his cane, he walked to the telephone and dialed Otterley’s number once more. As he waited for her to answer, he assured himself that his strength would soon return. He would be beautiful and powerful once more. With the restoration of his wings, all the suffering and humiliation he had endured would be transformed to glory.