“Never.”
“I’ll walk you through it,” she said. “Switch off the safety. Now roll down your window. Hold steady. Good, now level your arm.”
As Verlaine positioned the gun, the man in the SUV took aim.
“Just a moment,” Gabriella said. She swerved into the opposite lane and slowed, giving Verlaine a clear shot at the windshield.
“Shoot,” Gabriella said. “Now.”
Verlaine aimed the gun level with the SUV and squeezed the trigger. The bigger car’s windshield cracked into a web of filaments. Gabriella slammed on the brakes as the Mercedes hit a guardrail and flipped over the edge of the valley road, metal crunching as it rolled. Verlaine watched the upended vehicle, its tires spinning.
“Brilliant shot,” Gabriella said, pulling to the side of the road and cutting the engine. She gave him a look of pride, clearly pleasantly surprised by his aim. “Give me the gun. I need to make sure they’re dead.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Of course,” she snapped, taking the gun and climbing out of the car and over the guardrail. “Come, you might learn something.”
Verlaine followed Gabriella down the icy hillside, walking in her tracks through the snow. Looking above, he saw that a mass of dark clouds had collected. They hung abnormally low, as if they might descend upon the valley at any moment. Once the two of them reached the car, Gabriella instructed Verlaine to kick out the windshield. He bashed chunks of glass with the heel of his sneaker as she crouched down and peered inside.
“You hit the driver,” she said, drawing Verlaine’s gaze to the dead man.
“Beginner’s luck.”
“I should say so.” She gestured to the second man, whose body lay twenty feet away, facedown in the snow. “Two birds with one stone. The second was thrown when the car flipped.”
Verlaine could hardly believe what lay before him. The man’s body had transformed into the creature he’d seen through his train window the night before. A pair of scarlet wings splayed open over its back, the feathers brushing the snow. As an icy wind blew over Verlaine, it was impossible to tell if his body tingled from the cold or from the shock at what lay before him.
Meanwhile, Gabriella had managed to open the door and was searching the SUV, emerging with a gym bag, the very bag he’d left in his Renault the previous afternoon.
“That’s mine,” Verlaine said. “They took it when they broke into my car yesterday.”
Gabriella unzipped the bag, withdrew a folder, and sorted through its contents.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something that might explain how much Percival knows,” Gabriella said, examining the papers. “Has he seen these?”
Verlaine peered over her shoulder. “I didn’t give these files to him, but those guys might have.”
Gabriella turned away from the wreckage and made her way back up the snowy hill to the car. “We had better hurry,” she said. “The good sisters of St. Rose are in more immediate danger than I had feared.”
Verlaine took the driver’s seat, deciding that he would drive the remaining miles to the convent. He turned the Porsche around and headed back to the highway. Everything before him lay still and calm. The rolling hills appeared sedate under blankets of snow. The barn slouched in abandonment, the cloud-heavy sky vaulted above. Aside from a few scratches and a guttering in the engine, the old Porsche carried on with admirable resilience. In fact, it appeared that nothing had changed significantly in the past ten minutes but Verlaine. The leather steering wheel grew slick under his hands, and he found that his heart beat hard in his chest. Images of the dead men appeared in his mind.
Intuiting Verlaine’s thoughts, Gabriella said, “You did the right thing.”
“I’ve never even held a gun before today.”
“They were brutal killers,” she said, her voice businesslike, as if the dispatching of men were something she performed on a regular basis. “In a world of good and evil, one cannot shy from making distinctions.”
“It isn’t a distinction I’ve thought much about.”
“That,” Gabriella said softly, “will change if you remain with us.”
Verlaine slowed the car, pausing at a stop sign before turning back onto the highway. The convent was only miles ahead.
“Is Evangeline one of you?” he asked.
“Evangeline knows very little about angelology. We told her nothing about it when she was a child. She is young and obedient-traits that might have been her undoing if she weren’t extremely bright. Placing her in the hands of the sisters of St. Rose Convent was her father’s idea-he was Catholic, quite attached to the romantic notion that young ladies are best sheltered from danger by hiding them in a cloister. He could not help it. He was Italian. Such notions ran in his blood.”
“And she listened to him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your granddaughter gave up everything worth living for simply because her father told her to?”
“There is perhaps some room for debate about what is and what is not worth living for,” Gabriella said. “But you are right: Evangeline did exactly as she was instructed. Luca brought her to the United States after Evangeline’s mother-my daughter, Angela-was murdered. I imagine that her upbringing was rigorously religious. I imagine he must have prepared her from an early age for her eventual induction into St. Rose Convent. How else in this day and age would a young girl of her gifts go so willingly?”
Verlaine said, “It seems rather medieval.”
“But you did not know Luca,” Gabriella said. “And you do not know Evangeline. Their affection for each other was something to behold. They were inseparable. I believe that Evangeline would have done anything, absolutely anything, her father told her-including giving her life to the church.”
They drove along the highway in silence, the Porsche’s engine rattling, the forest rising on both sides. Only an hour before, it had seemed a strangely restful journey. But every cluster of trees, every bend in the road, every narrow lane funneling into their path presented the opportunity for ambush. Verlaine pressed his foot on the gas, pushing the Porsche faster and faster. He checked the mirror every few seconds, as if the SUV might appear at any moment, the assassins rising from the dead.
St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
Evangeline and Celestine rode the elevator to the fourth floor, the strap of the leather case already weighing upon Evangeline’s shoulder. When the doors opened, the old nun stopped her. “Go, my dear,” she said. “I will distract the others so that you may exit unnoticed.” Evangeline kissed Celestine’s cheek and left her in the elevator. The moment Evangeline walked away, Celestine pushed a button and the doors swept closed. Evangeline was alone.
Upon reaching her bedroom cell, Evangeline tore open the drawers and collected the objects of value to her-a rosary and a small amount of cash she had saved over the years-which she put in her pocket. Her heart ached as she glanced around her room. Not long before, she’d believed she would never leave it. She’d imagined that life stretched before her in an endless progression of ritual, routine, and prayer. She would wake each morning to pray, and she would go to sleep each evening in a room looking out upon the dark presence of the river. Overnight these certainties had melted, dissolving like ice in the Hudson’s current.
Evangeline’s thoughts were interrupted by a great cacophony of rumbling from the courtyard. She ran from her room, threw open a window, and looked over the grounds as a procession of black utility vans pulled into the horseshoe driveway curling before Maria Angelorum. The van doors slid open, and a group of strange creatures climbed out onto the convent lawn. Squinting, Evangeline tried to see them more clearly. They wore uniform black overcoats that brushed the snow as they walked, black leather gloves, and military-style combat boots. As they moved across the courtyard, coming closer to the convent, she observed that their number quickly multiplied-more and more arrived, as if they had the ability to appear from the chill air. As she examined the periphery of the convent grounds, she saw the creatures step from the darkened forest, climb the stone wall, and walk through the great iron gate at the drive. They might have been waiting, hidden, for hours. St. Rose Convent was completely surrounded by Gibborim.