Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,12
that he could be disgraced or even killed—all of this had faded in the pursuit of Eno. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what interested Bruno. There was something hypnotic about her very existence, something dangerous and exciting about the knowledge of what she would try to do to him if he succeeded in capturing her. She made him feel alive even as she planned to kill him.
Passage de la Vierge, seventh arrondissement, Paris
Verlaine climbed onto the ledge of a window, grasped the iron bars of the balcony, and, swinging his legs to gain momentum, pulled himself up toward the rooftop, the soles of his wing tips slipping as he climbed. He took a breath and continued. There were four more balconies above him, each one just out of reach, each one a step closer to Evangeline. He could see her there, above, perched on the roof tiles like a gargoyle.
By the time he’d hoisted himself over the balustrade of the final balcony, his muscles burned. The resistance felt good. His body was lean, his muscles tight and long, his endurance high. He would be forty-three years old in less than a week and he was in the best condition of his life, able to run for miles without breaking a sweat. Verlaine threw one leg over the ironwork balustrade and pushed himself onto the slate-roof tiles.
The Emim angel swooped past him, the wings brushing against his back as she flew into the sky. He felt the shiver of air against his skin, felt the strength of the creature’s body as it slid past. If he were to grab her wings, she would take him with her into the air. He watched her twist upward, the lights and rooftops of Paris stretching beyond. As the Emim angel lowered herself to the rooftop, Evangeline rose. Soon the two creatures stood at the center of the rooftop, one facing the other, their wings moving in time.
There was no doubt in Verlaine’s mind that the Emim was an exceptionally powerful angel. There was a rarefied, ghostly transparency to her skin and a certain distinction to her carriage that marked her as the higher order of warriors. As he examined the creature’s bone structure and facial features he saw that everything—her large, alien eyes and her sinuous body—coalesced to form a strange and inhuman beauty. One rarely came across such a striking Emim. He took a deep breath and wondered what kind of god would fashion such a seductive and evil being.
Verlaine heard something behind him and turned to see Bruno emerge from a balcony just below. He knew that he should have called for assistance right away, that following Evangeline without backup went against all that he’d been trained to do, but Verlaine hadn’t even thought to alert Bruno.
“I see you have a death wish,” Bruno said.
“I thought that was one of the criteria for this job.”
“Going solo against a creature like Eno is suicide,” Bruno said, gasping for breath as he pulled himself over the ledge. “Believe me, I’ve been there.”
Verlaine noted the hesitation in Bruno’s movements and the self-conscious way he spoke, and strained to imagine what sort of connection to Eno could provoke this reaction in his boss. Veraline turned to the two angels facing off at the center of the rooftop. “I think there’s something else happening here.”
Verlaine stared at Evangeline and Eno for a moment, as if considering their actions with the eye of an anthropologist. The Emim angel traced a circle around Evangeline, marking her territory, and slowly opened her enormous black wings. They were magnificent, falling in sweeping tiers, the small feathers graduating into large opaque bursts of plumage. While the powdery feathers appeared heavy and substantial, he knew that if he were to touch them, his hand would pass through, as if skimming through a projection of light. Most Emim were repulsive, but this one was alluring, with all of the defects of the breed altered to create a disturbing and dark beauty. Verlaine was captivated. He wanted to remember each minute detail of what he was seeing, to store it in his mind so that he could examine the creature again in the future.
As if to demonstrate the power and agility of her wings, Eno curled them around her body and, with a pulse of strength, puffed them outward, so that they flared like the hood of a cobra. Although the subject of years of intensive investigation, Verlaine was never quite prepared for the