Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,4
it went, though, in truth, the scratch was just one of the many abuses the Ducati had endured in recent years. Ironically he associated each dent and scratch with his own experiences over the past decade. He had been injured more times than he could count and—unlike the restored Ducati—he was beginning to show his age. Catching his reflection in a passing storefront window, he noted that the motorcycle was better preserved than he was.
As he reached the quai, something else caught his attention. Later, when Verlaine examined the moment he saw Evangeline, he would tell himself that he’d felt her presence before seeing her, that a change in the atmospheric pressure had taken place, the kind of imbalance created when a gust of cold air sweeps through a warm room. But at the time, he didn’t think. He simply turned and there she was, standing near the Seine. Verlaine recognized the sharpness of her shoulders and the glossy blackness of her hair. He recognized her high cheekbones, the same green eyes that had just stared back at him from the driver’s license. He simply wanted to stare at her, to make certain that it was really her, a flesh and blood being and not a figment of his mind. Verlaine held her eye for a second, and in that moment, he felt a slow turning in his perception, as if some rusty lock had clicked open. He caught his breath. A cold sensation grasped his spine and moved through his body. The mutilated woman below the Eiffel Tower was a stranger. He propped the Ducati on its kickstand and made his way to his Evangeline.
She crossed the street as he grew near and, without giving it a second thought, he fell into step behind her, following her as he would any other target. He wondered if she could sense him behind, feel his eyes upon her. She must have known he was there and purposely led him onward, because she never moved too far ahead, but never allowed him to get too close either. Soon he was close enough to see her reflection appear and disappear in the glass of a parked van, her image silvery, wavering, fluid as a mirage. As the image stabilized he saw that her hair had been cropped in a messy pageboy and she seemed to be wearing dark makeup. She could be any one of the thousands of young women walking through Paris, but her disguise didn’t fool Verlaine. He knew the real Evangeline.
As she increased her pace, he struggled to keep up. The streets were packed with people; Evangeline could disappear easily, in an instant, washing away in the swirl of the crowd. In all the hunts in which he’d participated, he had done his job impeccably. He followed, captured, and then imprisoned the creatures without question. But everything about this chase was different. He wanted to catch her, but he couldn’t follow the usual protocol if he did. Most troubling of all, he only wanted to talk to her, to understand what had happened in New York. He wanted an explanation. He felt he deserved that much.
Verlaine felt the soles of his favorite shoes—a pair of brown leather wing tips he’d worn for years—slipping with each step. A shiver of fear moved through him, gathering into a solid ball in his stomach at the thought of losing her again. He knew that, if she chose, she could easily outrun him. Indeed, she could open her wings and fly away. He had watched her do it before. The last time he had seen her she’d lifted herself away from him, moving high into the vault of the sky, her wings bright under the moon, a beautiful monster among the stars.
He hadn’t told anyone about this—not the angelologists who had been part of the New York mission and not the men and women who certified him as he passed through his courses at the academy. Evangeline’s true identity had remained his secret, and his silence had made him complicit in her deception. His silence was the only gift he could give her, but that gift had left him feeling like a traitor. He’d lied to everyone. Earlier, as he stood at the crime scene, he couldn’t look Bruno in the eyes.
Verlaine hated the feeling. He’d spent too many years hunting the creatures, worked too long and too hard to capture them, to be so shaken. No matter what had happened between them, years