Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  The turret windows had frozen over, creating blue-white fractals upon the glass. Evangeline attempted to clear a circle in the ice with her breath, rubbing the pane with the palm of her hand, but the glass remained foggy. In a panic to see the grounds, she removed her shoe and shattered the window with the heel, swiping the barbs of glass from the frame with quick sweeps, opening a small vantage over the courtyard.

  Bitterly cold air gushed into the turret. She could see the river and the forest below, framing the courtyard on three sides. The creatures had collected at the center of the grounds, a mass of dark-cloaked figures. Even at a distance, their height foreshortened, they sent a chill through Evangeline. There were fifty, perhaps a hundred of the creatures below her window, quickly composing themselves into rows.

  Suddenly, as if responding to a command, they shed their great cloaks in unison. The creatures’ limbs were bare, their skin throwing halos of radiance over the snow. When they stood upright, their immense height gave them the appearance of Grecian statues stationed on a desolate mall. Great, sharp-edged red wings opened on their backs, striated feathers glistening in the dull morning sunlight. In an instant she recognized the creatures, for she was gazing on beasts similar to those angelic beings she had observed in the warehouse in New York City with her father. Only in the years since she’d last set eyes on such a creature, she had grown from a girl to a woman, a change that rendered her sensitive to a seduction she hadn’t experienced before. Their bodies were exceedingly lovely, so sensuous that a shock of longing passed through her. Yet even through the haze of her desire, Evangeline found that everything about them—from the way they stood to the immense span of their wings—struck her as monstrous.

  Taking a deep breath to calm her thoughts she noticed a peculiar scent. Loamy and carbon-rich, it was the distinct scent of smoke. Searching the grounds she observed a group of the creatures huddled together beside the convent, fanning flames with their wings. The flickering fire rose higher and higher. The devils were attacking.

  Evangeline tucked the angelology journal into the leather case and ran down the turret steps, taking the direct passage to the Adoration Chapel. The smell of fire grew more distinct as she descended, and thick drafts of smoke swirled up through the stairwell. There was no sure way to know how far the fire had blazed and, realizing she might be trapped, she quickened her pace, the leather case clutched tight beneath her arm. The air thickened as she ran down the successive flights of stairs, confirming her belief that the fire was—at least for the moment—contained in the lower regions of the convent. Even so, it seemed impossible that the flames had risen so quickly and with such force. She recalled the creatures standing before the fire, their powerful wings beating, encouraging the flames to mount. She shuddered. The Gibborim would not stop until the entire convent lay in ashes.

  St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

  Verlaine could hardly make out the words ST. ROSE fashioned into the ornate wrought-iron gate, so dense was the smoke coming from the convent. Alongside the thick limestone wall sat his bludgeoned Renault, its windows smashed. It had most likely filled with snow and ice overnight, but it remained parked where he had left it. The gate to the convent was open, and as they parked the car, Verlaine saw a line of black utility vans lined up one behind the other before the church.

  “Do you see that car?” Gabriella asked, pointing to a white Jaguar hidden in foliage at the end of the convent driveway. “It belongs to Otterley Grigori.”

  “Related to Percival?”

  “His sister,” Gabriella said. “I had the great pleasure of knowing her in France.” Gabriella took the gun in her hand and stepped out of the Porsche. “If she is here, we can presume that Percival is here as well and that the two of them are behind this blaze.”

  Verlaine looked beyond Gabriella to the convent a short distance away. Smoke obscured the upper regions of the structure and, although he saw movement on the ground, he was too far away to make out what was happening. He stepped out of the car, following Gabriella toward the convent.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, eyeing him skeptically.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I need to know you’re here waiting with the car. When I find Evangeline, we will need to leave very quickly. I’m depending upon you to make sure that will happen. Promise me you’ll stay here.” Without waiting for a response, Gabriella started off toward the convent, tucking the gun into a pocket of her long black jacket.

  Verlaine leaned against one of the vans, watching Gabriella disappear around the side of the convent. He was tempted to follow her despite her instructions. Instead he walked through the rows of utility vans to the white Jaguar. Cupping his hands over his eyes, he peered through the window.

  On the beige leather seat sat a folder of his research, the photocopied picture of the Thracian coin on top. He tried to open the door and, finding it locked, looked around for something to break it with. Just then he saw Percival Grigori at the side of the road, making his way toward the car.

  Quickly, Verlaine ducked behind the stone wall that surrounded the convent grounds. Moving ever closer to the convent, his sneakers crunching in the ice-crusted snow, he stopped at a gap in the structure that gave onto the main lawn. He was astonished by the scene before him. Thick, dark smoke hovered above a raging fire; sheets of flames fell over the convent. Much to his amazement, an army of creatures—identical to the ones he had killed with Gabriella—swarmed over the convent grounds, perhaps a hundred winged, reptilian monsters gathered together in attack.

  He strained to see the scene more clearly. The beings were a hybrid of bird and beast, part human, part monster in equal measure. Wings were mounted upon their backs, lush and red. They were shrouded in a light so intense it covered them in a gauze of illumination. Although Gabriella had explained the Gibborim to him in great detail and he had recognized them as the same beings as had seen on the train the night before, he now realized that he had not, until this very moment, believed that so many of them existed.

  Through the flames and smoke, Verlaine spied more and more clusters of Gibborim. One by one they swooped upon the convent, their great wings beating hard and furious. They lifted high and buoyant in the wind, airy as kites drifting down on the building. They appeared impossibly light, as if their bodies were insubstantial. Their movements were so coordinated, so powerful that Verlaine understood at once they would be impossible to defeat. The creatures flew in an elaborate ballet of attack, rising from the ground in an elegant orchestration of violence, one creature weaving past the other as the flames soared upward. Verlaine watched the destruction in awe.

  One creature stood at a remove from the others, at the edge of the forest. Determined to examine it, Verlaine ducked into the thick foliage beyond the stone wall, moving closer to the being until he was less than ten feet away from it, hidden in bushes. He saw the elegance of its features—aquiline nose, golden curls, the terrifying red eyes. He breathed deeply, taking in the sweet aroma of its body—Gabriella had told him that the scent was called ambrosial by those who had the fortune (or misfortune) to encounter it. He was aware at once of the dangerous allure the creature held. Verlaine had imagined them to be hideous, the misbegotten children of a grand historical error, malformed hybrids of the sacred and the profane. He had not considered that he would find them beautiful.

  Suddenly the creature turned. In a sweeping motion he glanced toward the forest, as if perceiving Verlaine’s presence among the evergreens. The Gibborim’s quick movement revealed a flash of skin at the neck, a long, thin arm, the outline of its body. As the giant moved toward the stone wall, its red wings shivering about him, Verlaine lost all sense of why he had come, what he wanted, and what he would do next. He knew he should be afraid, but as the Gibborim stepped closer, his skin casting a glow on the ground, Verlaine felt an eerie calm come over him. The harsh, scintillating light of the fire raged, throwing a glow upon the creature, mixing with its native luminescence.
Verlaine stood hypnotized. Rather than run, as he knew he should, he wanted to draw closer to the creature, to touch the stark, pale body. He stepped from the safety of the forest and stood before the Gibborim, as if to give himself over. He gazed into its glassy eyes, as if searching for an answer to a dark and violent riddle.

  What Verlaine found there startled him beyond reckoning. Instead of malevolence, the creature’s gaze contained a frightening animal vapidity, a vacuity that was neither vicious nor benign. It was as if the creature lacked the ability to comprehend what lay before it. Its eyes were lenses into a pure emptiness. The being did not register Verlaine’s presence. Rather it looked beyond, as if he were nothing more than an element of the forest, a tree stump or a clump of leaves. Verlaine understood that he was in the presence of a creature with no soul.

  In a swift movement, it opened its red wings. Rotating one wing and then the other so that the fire’s harsh glare slid over them, the monster gathered its strength and leaped from the ground, light and airy as a butterfly, joining the others in the attack.

  Adoration Chapel, St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

  Evangeline found the Adoration Chapel awash in smoke. She tried to breathe but was overwhelmed by hot and poisonous air. It singed her skin and stung her eyes so that within seconds her vision had blurred with tears. Through the haze she could make out the silhouettes of the sisters, arrayed through the chapel. It appeared to Evangeline that the habits blended together, forming a single patch of inviolate black. Soft, smoky light suffused the church, falling softly over the altar. Why the sisters remained in the midst of the fire was incomprehensible to her. If they didn’t get out, they would die from the smoke.

  Confused, she turned to escape through Maria Angelorum Church when something caught her feet and she fell heavily upon the marble floor, banging her chin. The leather case was jarred from her grip, flying off into the haze beyond. To her horror, the face of Sister Ludovica stared up from the smoke, an expression of fear frozen upon her face. Evangeline had tripped on the body of the old woman, whose upended wheelchair lay tipped at her side, one wheel spinning. Bending over Ludovica, Evangeline placed her hands upon the warm cheeks and whispered a prayer, a final farewell to the eldest of the Elder Sisters. Gently, she pressed the lids of Ludovica’s eyes closed.

  Rising to her hands and knees, she inspected the scene as best she could through the smoke. The floor of the Adoration Chapel was littered with bodies. She counted four women lying at intervals along the aisles of pews, asphyxiated. Evangeline felt a surge of despair. The Gibborim had smashed great holes in the angelic-spheres windows, bombarding the bodies with debris. Pieces of colored glass were scattered from one end of the chapel to the other, lying like pieces of hard candy on the marble floors. The pews had been broken, the delicate golden pendulum clock crushed, and the marble angels tipped. The gaping hole in the window opened the convent’s lawn to view. The creatures swarmed over the snowy grounds. Smoke rose into the sky, reminding her that the fire still burned. Gales of freezing wind blew through the desolate interior, sweeping across the ruin. Worst of all, the kneelers before the host were empty. Their chain of perpetual prayer had been obliterated. The sight was so terrible that Evangeline caught her breath at the sight of it.

  The air along the floor was slightly cooler, the smoke less dense, and so Evangeline fell to her stomach once again and crawled over the floor in search of the leather case. Smoke burned her eyes; her arms ached with the effort. The smoke had transformed the once-familiar chapel into a place of danger—an amorphous, hazy minefield filled with unseen traps. If the smoke pressed low upon her, she risked losing consciousness like the others. If she crawled directly to Maria Angelorum to make it outside, she might lose the precious case.

  Finally Evangeline caught a glint of metal—the copper clasps of the leather case sparked in the firelight. She reached out and grasped the handle, noticing, as she pulled the case closer, that the leather had been singed. Lifting herself off the ground, she covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve, trying to block out the smoke. She recalled the questions Verlaine had asked her in the library, the intense curiosity he’d shown about the location of the seal on Mother Francesca’s drawings. Her grandmother’s last card had confirmed his theory: The architectural drawings had been made for the purpose of marking a hidden object, something secreted by Mother Francesca and guarded for nearly two hundred years. The precision with which the maps of the chapel had been drawn could leave little doubt. Mother Francesca had placed something in the tabernacle.

  Evangeline climbed the altar steps, making her way through the smoke to the elaborately decorated tabernacle. It sat atop a marble pillar, its doors crusted with golden symbols of alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. It was the size of a small cupboard, large enough to conceal something of value. Evangeline tucked the leather case under her arm and pulled at the doors. They were locked.

  Suddenly a clamoring of movement alerted her to a new presence in the chapel. She turned just as two creatures broke through one of the stained-glass windows, shattering the luminous plate of the First Angelic Sphere so that shards of gold and red and blue glass scattered over the nuns. Ducking behind the altar, she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she examined the Gibborim. They were even bigger than they’d seemed from the turret, tall and lanky, with huge red eyes and sweeping crimson wings that draped over their shoulders like cloaks.

  One of the Gibborim tore at the kneelers, throwing them to the floor and stamping upon them, while another decapitated the marble figure of an angel, separating head from body with one vicious swipe. At the far end of the chapel, another creature clutched a golden candle holder by the base and threw it with extraordinary strength at a stained-glass window, a lovely rendition of the Archangel Michael. The glass splintered in an instant, a symphonic crackling filling the air as if a thousand cicadas sang at once.

  Behind the altar Evangeline held the leather case close to her chest. She knew she must measure each movement with care. The slightest noise would alert the creatures to her presence. She was scanning the chapel to find the best route for escape when she discovered Philomena, crouched in a corner. Philomena lifted her hand slowly, gesturing to her to remain still, to watch and wait. From her hiding place near the tabernacle, Evangeline watched Philomena creep along the floor of the altar.

  Then, in a movement startling in its speed and precision, Philomena grasped the monstrance poised high above the altar. The monstrance was solid gold, the size of a candelabra, and must have been extraordinarily heavy. Nonetheless, Philomena raised it over her head and smashed it upon the marble floor. The monstrance itself took no damage at the blow. The small eye of crystal at its center, the orb encasing the host, however, shattered. Evangeline heard the distinct crack of breaking glass from her hiding place.

  Philomena’s actions were such a gesture of sacrilege, so awful in their violation of the sisters’ prayers and their beliefs, that Evangeline stood frozen in astonishment. In the midst of the destruction and the horror of the death of their sisters, there seemed no reason for any further vandalism. Yet Philomena continued to work at the monstrance, tearing at the glass. Evangeline stepped away from her hiding place, wondering what madness had overtaken Philomena.

  Philomena’s actions drew the creatures’ attention. They moved toward her, their vermilion wings pulsing in time with their breath. Suddenly one of them lunged at Philomena. Possessed with the zealotry of her beliefs and a power that Evangeline would never have imagined her capable of displaying, Philomena stepped free of the monstrous grasp and in an elegant sweep took the creature by its wings and twisted away from it. The great red wings ripped from the creature’s body. The Gibborim fell to the floor, writhing in a growing pool of thick blue fluid that poured from the wound as it screeched in horrid, gurgling agony. Evangeline felt that she had descended into a version of hell. Their most sacred chapel, the temple of their daily prayers, had been defiled.

 
Philomena turned back to the monstrance, pried away the cracked crystal encasement and then, in a moment of triumph, held something above her head. Evangeline tried to make out the object in Philomena’s hands—it was a small key. Philomena had cut herself on the glass, and ribbons of blood dripped over her wrists and arms. While the sight of such mayhem repulsed Evangeline—she could hardly bring herself to look at the mangled body of the dismembered creature—Philomena did not seem disturbed in the least. Yet even in her fright, Evangeline marveled at Philomena’s discovery.

  Philomena called to her to come closer, but there was nothing she could do: The surviving creatures suddenly fell upon Philomena, tearing at her clothing like hawks feasting on a rodent. The black fabric of her habit was swallowed up in a crush of oily red wings. But then Evangeline spied Philomena pushing free from the imbroglio. As if gathering her last bit of strength, Philomena threw the key to Evangeline. Evangeline picked it off the floor and stepped back behind the marble pillar.

  When Evangeline looked again, a cold light fell over the desiccated, charred body of Sister Philomena. The murderous Gibborim had moved to the center of the chapel, their great wings drawn, as if they might take to the air at any moment.

  At the doorway, a crowd of sisters gathered. Evangeline wanted to call out in warning, but before she could speak, the great uniformity of habited women parted and Sister Celestine emerged from the periphery, her wheelchair pushed by attendants. She wore no veil, and her pure white hair intensified the lines of sadness etched into her face. The attendants pushed Celestine’s wheelchair to the base of the altar, her pathway swallowed in a sea of black habits and white scapulars.