Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,91

entrance of the cavern, he looked past his young comrades and through the tangle of birch trees beyond, letting his mind drift to the hours ahead. He threw a rope ladder over the ledge. Vera stepped to it, grabbed the first rung, and lowered herself down. The descent would be painstaking and dangerous. The familiar sound of water bounced through the gorge, echoing, filling the space with a deafening noise, and he wondered why Vera and Azov hadn’t asked for more specific information about the layout of the Devil’s Throat, why they had trusted him about Lucien, why they didn’t verify his story. It used to be that agents trusted no one.

Valko knew the mythology behind the cavern, but he also knew the cave as a geological formation. He knew the depth and the general perimeters as precisely as the contour lines on a topographical map; he recognized the sound of water that came from the river and the water that came from the waterfall. Quickly he went, letting gravity take him downward. He counted each step, positioning his feet carefully, delicately on the ladder rungs, adding them up. He looked over his shoulder, straining to see in the swirling, infinite darkness. He knew that the noise would grow louder and louder as he descended. As the shaft deepened, the darkness would become thick. He could see no farther than the whites of his knuckles wrapped upon the ladder’s rungs, and yet he knew that soon he would reach the bottom.

The Devil’s Throat Cavern, Smolyan, Bulgaria

As Vera followed Valko through the darkness, she saw a skeletal figure stretched out on the rock, its pale arms crossed upon its chest. Seraphina Valko’s photographs of the dead Watcher had taken Vera’s breath away when she’d first seen them a year earlier in Paris, and now here was the actual angel, in the flesh, its skin giving the illusion of life, its golden hair curling in tendrils to its shoulders. As they stood over its body, taking in its unearthly beauty, Vera felt a sense that she was following a path created long before her birth.

“It looks alive,” Vera said, lifting the white metallic gown and rubbing the fabric between her fingers.

“I wouldn’t touch it,” Valko said. “The bodies of angels weren’t meant to be touched. The level of radioactivity may still be very high.”

Azov bent over the body. “But I thought that they couldn’t die.”

“Immortality is a gift that can be taken as easily as it is bequeathed,” Valko said. “Clematis believed that the Lord struck the angel down as vengeance. It may be that angels live the way humans do—in the shadow of their Creator, wholly dependent upon the whims of divinity.”

Valko, who had clearly seen the dead Watcher many times before, headed off into the cavern. Vera followed the trembling glow of his flashlight into the cold, wet space. He stopped before a declivity in the wall that, upon closer inspection, was a chiseled corridor that opened into a large room. In the depths of the space, removed from the roar of water, there was light and movement, the soft scraping of a pen on paper. A figure stood and walked toward them, his thin body barely discernible.

“Lucien?” Valko said, in little more than a whisper.

“What is it?” a soft voice said.

“Lucien, there are some people I’d like you to meet,” Valko said. “Do you mind if we come in?”

The angel hesitated, and then, as if realizing that he couldn’t refuse, stepped aside and let them pass into his chamber.

A candle burned on a table in the corner, throwing a flickering weak light over loose pages and an inkwell. The cave had little in it—a bookshelf packed with books, a tattered carpet, a small table and a matching wooden chair—and Vera had the feeling that she was walking into the spare, severe, cloistered space of a hermit. Vera knew that angels could exist without the comforts of the material world, their bodies made of fire and air. Lucien had an aura of tranquility, of a being that existed outside of time. Vera felt fear and awe and reverence at once. She wanted to fall on her knees and behold the angel’s beauty.

Slowly Lucien opened his wings and, in what seemed to be a gesture of protection, as if he were too fragile to be seen by human eyes, folded them over his body. Vera tried to see the creature clearly, but his skin had the fluid consistency of candlelight. Even