Angelopolis: A Novel (ANGELOLOGY SERIES)

by Danielle Trussoni

  “Surely she would have known that the heart symbol’s origin lies in silphium,” Sveti said.

  “Angela was a skeptic,” Azov answered. “Silphium is one of the most intriguing plants of the ancient world. Many modern botanists refuse to verify it, claiming that there is no proof that it even existed.”

  “I get the feeling that you don’t agree,” Vera said.

  “The plant has been extinct for over one thousand years, but you are right, Vera. I have no doubt that silphium existed. Whether it was the cure-all it was purported to be in ancient Mediterranean cultures, I cannot say. Indigestion, asthma, cancer—silphium was allegedly used to treat all of these maladies. Perhaps most important, the plant was believed to both aid in contraception and, as I mentioned, act as an aphrodisiac. It was considered so precious that it formed an important part of trading between Cyrene, now Libya, and other coastal countries, so much so that glyphs and coins were created bearing its image.”

  Sveti examined the album page once more. “It is intriguing in this context, because silphium appears to be the single nonfloral ingredient in the formula, and the only one that is extinct.” She flipped through the pages of rose petals. “For example, there are over one hundred varieties of roses in the book. Clearly the formula would have required a distillation of rose oil.”

  “But rose oil is so common,” Vera said. “Roses can be found everywhere.”

  Azov said, “Now, yes. But after the Flood there would have been only a few seeds keeping the plant from complete extinction. Humanity has—over the millennia—cultivated and revived the rose. If we hadn’t, we would be living in a world without roses. The same can be said for all of the flowers listed in Noah’s catalog of seeds. It is through the human preference for flowers that many of these remain with us. It is a wonder that silphium, which was once so important, nearly died out.”

  “Nearly?” Vera said. “I thought it was extinct?”

  Azov smiled. “It is extinct,” he said. “Except for one or two remaining seeds.”

  Vera stared at Azov, taking in the meaning of what he had said. If they had this plant, it would be possible to create the formula—whatever it was. “Is the silphium among your seed collection?”

  “It’s here,” Azov said. He opened a tiny drawer and removed a metal box. He unfastened the catch and lifted a silk pouch. It was ominously airy, as if nothing at all were stored inside. He upended the pouch and a single seed—yellowish brown with specks of green—rolled onto the table. “There is only one left in my care,” Azov said. “The other seed was given to Dr. Raphael Valko in 1985.”

  “Do you think he knew about this album, and about this formula in particular?” Sveti asked.

  “It’s hard to say,” Azov muttered, as he paged through the book. “The scope of Angela’s work was no secret to him, and he certainly knew that she and I were in close contact before her death. But Raphael never mentioned her when I delivered the seed to him.”

  “I fail to see what Raphael Valko has to do with any of this,” Vera said. “Though I have to confess, I am dying to meet him. Especially if he has some connection to this elixir.”

  “The real question is: Can we mix this potion?” Sveti asked.

  “And if such a potion will do anything at all to the Nephilim,” Azov said, returning his gaze to the album. “If we take the flower petals from behind the wax paper and grind them together in the correct proportions, and in the order designated in Rasputin’s equations, we would have the base for a chemical reaction. That leaves silphium, which we might be able to grow, although in minute quantities.”

  “More difficult is the last ingredient,” Sveti said, pointing to a page in the album. “This calls for a metal that was not even verified to exist during Rasputin’s lifetime.”

  “I know what it is that you’re going to say,” Vera said. “It is a metal that was used in great quantities before the Flood but had virtually disappeared after the death of Noah. It was given various names by Enoch, Noah, and others in the ancient world who had contact with it. It was rediscovered and classified by Raphael Valko, who renamed it Valkine.” Vera thought this over for a moment and said, “There hasn’t been a piece of Valkine available for more than sixty years.”

  “If you exclude the Valkine lyre that was recovered in New York in 1999, then you’re right. The last person to have even a tiny amount was Raphael Valko himself. He came across significant quantities of the substance at the beginning of the twentieth century, when he took possession of one of the celestial instruments, a beautiful lyre that was believed to have been the very instrument Orpheus played. Before he found the lyre there were speculations about the substance that made up the instruments. Some angelologists believed they were made of gold, others of copper. No one knew for certain. And so Valko took a file and scraped shavings from the base of the lyre, analyzed the metal, and came to understand that it was an entirely unique material, one that had never been studied or classified. He named it Valkine. While the lyre itself was packed up and sent to America for safekeeping during the war, the shavings were his. He kept them for some years, and then, the story goes, he melted them down and made three lyre pendants.”

  “Dr. Raphael Valko fashioned the pendants. He must have more of the metal, even if it is just a trace amount,” Vera said.

  Azov stood and slid on a brown leather jacket. “There’s only one way to find out for sure,” he said, putting his hand on Vera’s shoulder and leading her from the room.

  The Fifth Circle

  FURY

  Trans-Siberian Railway

  Verlaine’s ears rang with a steady, grating buzz. He opened his eyes and saw an indistinct space, foggy and insubstantial, its gray walls bleeding into a gray ceiling, giving him the impression that he’d awoken in a cave. His whole body was consumed in heat, so much so that even the crisp cotton sheets under his shoulders burned his skin. He couldn’t figure out where he was, how he had ended up on such a hard mattress, why his whole body throbbed with pain. Then it all came back: St. Petersburg, the black-winged angel, the electricity moving through his body.

  The outline of a woman appeared at his side, a shadowy presence that seemed both comforting and menacing at once. He blinked, trying to make out her features. For a second he was in his recurring dream with Evangeline. He felt the icy coolness of her kiss, the electric attraction as he touched her, the strength of her wings as they wrapped around his body. He was disoriented by her presence, confused about whether he had seen her at all, afraid that—when he awoke completely—she would be lost to him again. But his eyes were open and she was at his side. The beautiful creature he had been longing for had come back to him.

  Verlaine blinked again, trying to focus on his surroundings. “You might want these,” a voice said, and Verlaine felt the metal of his wire-rimmed glasses against his skin. Instantly the world contracted into focus, and he caught sight of the Russian angel hunter he’d seen just before he lost consciousness. Without her helmet she looked softer than he remembered—less the professional killing machine and more a regular person. The woman had long blond hair and an expression of concern on her face. Bruno stood nearby, looking almost as bad as Verlaine felt. His hair was matted and his cheek had been scraped raw. Seeing Bruno’s injuries brought Verlaine back to his own. Every breath hurt. He remembered the chase through St. Petersburg, he remembered Eno and the wretched Nephilim twins. He swallowed hard, the pain going down with it. He wanted to say something but couldn’t find his voice.

  “Welcome back,” Bruno said, moving close to squeeze Verlaine’s shoulder.

  While Verlaine had discerned that he was in some kind of medical facility, he had no idea if he was in Russia or France. “Where am I?”

  “Somewhere between Moscow and Yaroslavl, I’d guess,” Bruno said, checking his watch.

  Bruno’s face was encrusted with dried blood, his clothes streaked with dirt. Verlaine gave Bruno a questioning look, trying to understand what was happening.
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  “We’re on our way to Siberia,” Bruno said. “By train.”

  “What happened to you?” Verlaine asked, trying to pull himself up in bed and feeling a spike of pain.

  “Run-in with the Russian Raiphim,” Bruno said.

  “Sounds like a good name for your memoirs,” the blond woman said.

  “This is Yana,” Bruno said. “She’s a Russian hunter who has, coincidentally, been tracking Eno for nearly as long as I have. She has also agreed to relinquish one of her transport cars for your recovery.”

  Yana wore tight jeans and a tatty pink turtleneck sweater—a markedly different aesthetic from the leather and steel of her hunting uniform. There was a wary, tired air about her as she stepped away from the bed. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms, as if she were anxious to get back to work. Her English was heavily accented as she said, “Feeling okay?”

  “Fantastic.” Verlaine’s head felt like it might explode. “Just perfect.”

  “Frankly, you’re lucky to feel anything at all,” Yana said, looking him over with an air of professional interest, as if comparing his injuries with those she’d seen in the past.

  Verlaine tried to sit up and the pain localized to a sharp, searing burn on his chest. “What the hell happened?”

  “You don’t remember?” Bruno asked.

  “Up to a certain point, I remember everything,” Verlaine said. “I must have lost consciousness.”

  “You must have lost your mind to go after Eno like that,” Yana said. “Another minute and you would have been completely scorched.”

  Verlaine remembered the sensation of electricity moving through him and shivered. “She tried to kill me,” he said.

  “And she very nearly succeeded,” Bruno said.

  “Lucky for you we were able to stop her before that happened,” Yana added. “You were burned, but it’s localized.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Verlaine felt as if his entire body had been slow roasted over a bonfire.

  “If you recall the bodies at St. Rose Convent, I think you’ll count yourself as one of the lucky,” Bruno said.

  The attack on St. Rose had left a deep impression in Verlaine’s imagination. Dozens of women had been charred to death, their bodies so badly disfigured that they were unrecognizable. He knew exactly what the creatures were capable of doing to a person.

  “The electrical current threw your heart into a seizure for a good three minutes,” Bruno said. “Yana performed CPR. She was able to keep you alive until her colleagues brought her a portable defibrillator.”

  “You came back from the dead,” Yana said. “Literally.”

  “I guess I have one thing in common with the Raiphim,” Verlaine said.

  “Although that doesn’t explain why you survived the attack,” Yana said. “Forgive the expression, but you should have been burned to a crisp.”

  “Lovely image,” Verlaine said, pulling himself up in bed. The skin over his chest prickled with pain, but he tried to ignore it and go forward, one small movement at a time. He remembered Eno’s strength, the heat of her touch.

  “This might have had something to do with it,” Bruno said, pulling a necklace from his pocket and holding it above Verlaine.

  He took the pendant and looked it over. It hadn’t been altered by Eno’s attack in the least. The metal still shone as if alloyed with sunlight. He knew that Bruno was connecting the dots and probably already understood how Verlaine had come to have the pendant. Gabriella had been Bruno’s close friend, and although his mentor wasn’t about to talk about the pendant in front of Yana, it was clear that Bruno was not happy that Verlaine had hid it from him all these years.

  Verlaine leaned up to fasten the necklace around his neck, and winced. Yana—more out of impatience than anything resembling compassion—lifted it from his fingers and secured the clasp. “There,” she said, giving him a pat on the chest and sending a fresh jolt of pain through his body. “You’re safe from the bogeyman.”

  The door opened and a doctor arrived, a short, hefty woman with thick glasses and perfectly styled hair. She leaned over the bed, yanked the sheets down to Verlaine’s waist. A thick, white, gauze bandage had been taped over his chest. She worked her fingernails under the edges, lifting the tape and pulling it gently away.

  “Here,” Yana said, taking a small mirror from her bag and giving it to Verlaine.

  He looked in the mirror and saw the reflection of a battered man, a line of fresh stitches over his eye, a series of bruises staining his skin. The image was so unfamiliar, so startling, that Verlaine straightened his spine and threw back his shoulders. His burned skin chafed, and he wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep, but he refused to be the person in the reflection. He held the mirror level with his chest and saw that it was blackened, with raw patches of red and pink oozing a clear liquid. An impression of Eno’s hands was branded into his skin.

  “You now carry the telltale mark of an Emim’s attack,” Bruno said.

  Yana examined the outline of the fingers seared upon Verlaine’s chest. “The shape of the burn is very particular. It is something I have long been interested in. A creature must position its hands a certain way to draw down the electric charge—the thumbs touching and the palms angled outward. Do you recognize the shape?”

  “Of course,” Verlaine said, feeling sickened by the sight. “They’re wings.”

  He was used to injuries—he’d been hurt innumerable times over the course of the past ten years—but an assault like this wasn’t one he would forget. The creature had marked him forever.

  The doctor stepped away and returned with a tray stacked with ointment, scissors, bandages, and cotton swabs. Verlaine breathed hard, bringing the air into his lungs slowly as the doctor used cotton to clean his chest.

  “The nerves are dead where the flesh is black. The pain you feel is from the less severe burns around the edges of the wound.” The doctor paused, studying the shape of the burn. “I haven’t seen one of these in a while,” she said, brushing an ointment over his skin and pressing on a new bandage. “This application will help enormously with the pain. In the old days it would have taken weeks, perhaps months, to fully recover from this.”

  Verlaine felt a coolness suffuse his skin. The effect was immediate and intense. “Amazing,” he said. “The pain is fading.”

  “Your skin is rapidly healing itself,” the doctor said, leaning close to Verlaine. “The ointment is a nanoemulsion that stops bacteria from setting in while creating the conditions for rapid skin cell production. A layer of new skin forms immediately over the burn, helping to keep out air and reduce pain. It’s a rare commodity: We have only a few doses. It was developed by angelologists for angelologists. It is unbelievably effective.” She ran her hand over the surface of the wound, as if to prove her point.

  “Effective or not, we need this angelologist,” Yana said, unable to conceal her impatience. “How long does he need to rest?”

  The doctor held Verlaine’s wrist and took his pulse. “Your heartbeat is normal,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  Verlaine wiggled his toes and then moved his ankles. The ringing in his ears and the searing pain across his chest were gone. “Tip-top,” he said.

  As she took the tray and headed for the door, she said, “Then he should be able to leave the train at your scheduled stop. Tyumen is about thirty-five hours from here. I would suggest taking it easy until then.” Glancing at Verlaine, she said, “That means: no more dates with the devil. Although I doubt you’ll take that advice. Agents like you never do.”

  Verlaine threw his legs over the side of the bed. He steadied himself and stood. He was with Yana on this: There was no way he was going to stay in some godforsaken hospital cot.

  After the doctor left the room, Bruno said, “There’s some good news in all of this. We managed get the egg back. And, most important, to capture Eno.”

  “Where is she?” Verlaine asked.

  “In a safe place
,” Yana said, her gaze boring into him as if daring him to ask more.

  Bruno winked at Verlaine and said, “Yana insisted that we take her to a specialized prison in Siberia.”

  Verlaine said, “Leave it to the Russians to have an angel gulag.”

  “We are taking her for observation,” Yana said. “You’re lucky I agreed to allow you to accompany me.”

  “And you think that you’re capable of getting information out of Eno?” Verlaine asked.

  “There’s no other way,” Yana said. “Once Eno is taken into custody in Siberia, she’ll be forced to talk.”

  “Have you witnessed such questioning before?” Verlaine asked Yana.

  “The specialists at the prison have very particular methods of extracting information from their prisoners,” Yana replied, her voice quiet.

  Verlaine moved through a mental list of what had happened in the past twenty-four hours, trying to shake the feeling that he’d landed in an alternate universe, a kind of strange, lifelike game that was both real and unreal at the same time. He was on a train moving through the vast and frozen Siberian tundra in pursuit of a half-human, half-angel creature that he now knew—after ten years of doubt—he loved. After all that he’d seen he had thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore. He’d been wrong. Things just kept getting stranger and stranger.

  St. Ivan Island, Black Sea, Bulgaria

  Azov’s chopper embodied just the sort of mixture of cultural references that inspired scholars like Vera to go to work every day. According to Sveti, the Vietnam-era machine had been lost by the Americans—abandoned by a crew after it crash-landed in Cambodia—and ended up in Azov’s possession by dint of various trades and handshakes over the past three decades. It had been confiscated by Communists, repaired in the USSR, and sent on to their Bulgarian allies during the seventies. By the time Azov got his hands on it, the cold war had ended and Bulgaria had joined NATO. Now, watching Sveti grip the cyclic control between her knees, Vera wondered what kind of realigned world children born today would grow up to live in.