Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,105

all his time in the service of angelology, he had never witnessed anything quite like the scene before him. It took him a few seconds to fully process what he was seeing.

At the center of the room, strapped to two examining tables near Godwin and Eno, were the Grigori twins. Verlaine couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead: They’d been stripped and laid out like corpses. Their golden wings were wrapped around their bodies, covering them from chest to ankle in scintillating plumage. Their skin was bluish gray, the color of ash. Surely they must be dead, Verlaine thought, but then he saw one of them blink his eyes, and he knew that they were somehow part of Eno and Godwin’s experiment.

Verlaine heard a voice behind him.

“I knew you’d come,” Evangeline said.

Verlaine turned and found her sitting cross-legged in the far corner of the cage, her wings folded over her and her body subsumed by shadow.

“I felt you standing outside the door. I wanted to warn you, but Godwin got to you first.”

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Verlaine said at last, lacking the words to describe his relief and joy at finding her.

“Hard to believe, I know,” she said, smiling slightly.

As Evangeline spoke to him, Verlaine felt as if the order of the universe were changing shape. Somehow when he was near her, he understood everything perfectly. He knew why he had thought of her so often; he understood why he’d followed her halfway around the world. Verlaine’s heart was beating too hard, sweat falling from his forehead and dripping down his neck. This woman had changed everything. He couldn’t go forward without her.

“We have to get out of here,” he whispered, sliding his hand over her hand and squeezing it. He looked from one end of the laboratory to the other, trying to find a way out. Their prospects didn’t look good. He pushed against the wall. The Plexiglas was impenetrable. “We’re going to have to perform some serious Houdini to get out of this.”

• • •

It was only a matter of minutes before Verlaine heard a commotion at the door—Bruno and Yana had broken into the lab. Verlaine strained to see what was happening, but his view was blocked as Godwin unfurled a white sheet and threw it over the Grigori twins, as if to protect them. Bruno went after Godwin as Yana snatched a set of keys and ran to the cage. As she unlocked it, Verlaine grabbed Evangeline and pulled her free, leaving the others to fight.

They were in the hallway when a great explosion shook the air. Within seconds, smoke and ash billowed from the lab. An alarm began to sound; it rang through the panopticon, echoing and distorting. The toxic smell of burning plastic, mixed with the syrupy sweet scent of scorched flesh, created a noxious and sickening aroma. Verlaine tried to navigate his way through the smoke, desperate to find a way out. As a second series of explosions went off in the distance—the blasts stronger, more pronounced than the first—Verlaine knew that they were in danger.

Suddenly, he made out Godwin ahead, running into the fire. He tried to follow, but felt Evangeline resist.

“We’re going in the wrong direction,” she said, pulling him back.

“How do you know?”

“I can’t feel the presence of angelic creatures any longer,” she said. “I don’t know why, but it’s as if I’m wired to sense them. There are definitely no Nephilim this way. The panopticon must be in the other direction.”

They turned around and ran in the opposite direction. Soon the floor began to shake, as if something nearby were being detonated. As the sound of explosions grew louder, he realized that they were approaching the very center of the destruction. The hallway opened into the panopticon and, as they sped past the wide arc of the Level 1 cells, Verlaine found nothing but deserted chambers, many of them encrusted in dried plasma, its golden hue charred to gray. Verlaine could see creatures across the panopticon, running toward the tunnels, trying to escape. The prisoners were disoriented and stunned, assessing their surroundings with wariness, as if they suspected that they had fallen prey to a cruel test. At the tower, a group of Raiphim formed a mob. They screamed and struck at the tower with whatever was at hand—metal folding chairs and rods broken from the cots in their cells. A pair of Gibborim leaped from the railing and swooped down over the scattering humans below, snatching