Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,108
there?” Verlaine asked Dmitri, brushing the snow from his clothes.
“Exactly what Godwin hoped would happen,” Dmitri said. His face was streaked black, his clothes singed.
“Is he inside?” Verlaine asked.
“There’s no way to know for sure,” Dmitri said.
Verlaine felt his heart sink. Godwin could be inside, or he could have escaped. He could be anywhere.
“What about the nuclear plant?” Verlaine asked.
“It’s supposed to be able to resist this kind of rupture,” Dmitri said, glancing over his shoulder at the rising smoke. “But I don’t think we should stay and take our chances. We have to get as far from here as we can. Now.”
“We can’t leave,” Verlaine said. “Not yet.”
“If we stay,” Dmitri said, pointing to the far side of the field, “we face that.”
The escaped prisoners—every variety of angel—filled the landscape. Verlaine scanned the chaos of movement, searching for Evangeline, spotting her everywhere and nowhere at once until, in the center of it all, he found her. She walked hand in hand with Lucien at the edge of the panopticon. Verlaine saw, as they walked closer, the image of the father in his child. The delicate shape of her face, the large eyes, the luminosity that surrounded her—it was obvious that Evangeline and Lucien were made of the same ethereal substance.
“Evangeline has to come with us,” Verlaine said, feeling more helpless by the second.
“I don’t know if Lucien will allow that,” Azov said, looking circumspect. “We traveled together for thousands of miles. I know his strength, but also, more important, I know that he is a gentle and kind creature, one whose motives are good. Evangeline, if I can believe what I’ve heard about her, would never fight against him, or allow you to harm him. If you want to bring Evangeline with you, there is only one certain way.”
Azov removed a vessel from his pocket and showed it to Verlaine. He remembered Vera’s confidence that Azov could help her understand Rasputin’s journal. Somehow they had succeeded in making the formula.
Verlaine reached for the vessel, but Azov stopped him. Instead he started toward the angels himself, calling their names, his voice filled with a desperate hope that Verlaine understood: He felt the same violent need to call Evangeline back, to convince her to leave Lucien behind. To Verlaine’s surprise, Azov caught Evangeline’s attention—she walked across the snowy field, approaching them, Lucien at her side.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want with us?”
Lucien glanced at the vessel in Azov’s hand. Whatever Azov was doing, Lucien understood it immediately. “Don’t go closer,” he said, opening his wings and wrapping them in a protective gesture around Evangeline’s shoulders.
Azov took a plastic vessel from his pocket and held it out to her. “This is for you,” he said. “It will bring you—and the other creatures like you—back.”
“Back to what?” Evangeline asked.
“You have a choice,” Azov replied.
“You don’t have to be one of them anymore,” Verlaine said, stepping closer to Evangeline.
“If I’m not one of them,” she said, her gaze falling upon Verlaine, “what will I be?”
“Human,” Verlaine said. “You’ll be like us.”
Without taking her eyes from Verlaine, she said, “I’m not sure I know how to be like you anymore.”
“I can teach you,” Verlaine said. “I’ll help you return to what you were. If you let me.”
Evangeline extricated herself from Lucien’s wings and, her feet crunching in the snow, walked to Azov and took the medicine of Noah. Verlaine could almost see her thoughts as they crossed her mind—her expression changed from consternation to curiosity to determination. She brushed the cork of the vessel with her fingernail and tilted the vessel back and forth, sending the liquid from one end of the tube to the other. Then, with a quick, decisive gesture, Evangeline slid the potion into her pocket. Turning away, she ran to join Lucien.
Verlaine started after her, but Dmitri and Azov wrestled him back, pulling him across the field, toward the Neva.
“Come on,” Yana yelled from the driver’s seat. “We have to go now.”
As he struggled, using all his strength to reach Evangeline, he could see that the dense black smoke rising from the reactor had grown thicker. A noise filled the air. It began as a vibration, a clattering as sharp as the hum of a cicada. The daylight faded to a thin light, pale and pink, as a series of flashes rocked the earth. Within seconds, the air filled with ash. Then the exodus began. From the depths of the smoke, a swarm of wings swirled up