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Summary
Summary
The follow up to the 2010 book 'Angelology.'
Summary
The sequel to the New York Times bestselling Angelology will thrill fans of Deborah Harkness, Justin Cronin, and Elizabeth Kostova
Hailed by USA Today as "a thrill ride best described as The Da Vinci Code meets Raiders of the Lost Ark ," Danielle Trussoni's bestselling first novel, Angelology , wove biblical lore, the Orpheus myth, and Milton's Rebel Angels into a present-day world tinged with the divine supernatural. The novel plunged two endearing loners--art historian V. A. Verlaine and Evangeline, a beautiful young nun--into an ancient battle between a secret society and mankind's most insidious enemies: angel-human hybrids known as the Nephilim.
Now a decade has passed since Verlaine saw Evangeline alight from the Brooklyn Bridge, the sight of her wings a betrayal that haunts him still. The Nephilim are again on the rise, scheming to construct their own paradise--the Angelopolis--and ruthlessly pursued by Verlaine in his new calling as an angel hunter. But when Evangeline materializes, Verlaine is besieged by doubts that will only grow as forces more powerful than even the Nephilim draw them from Paris to Saint Petersburg and deep into the provinces of Siberia and the Black Sea coast. A high-octane tale of abduction and liberation, treasure seeking and divine warfare, Angelopolis plumbs Russia's imperial past, modern genetics, and the archangel Gabriel's famous visitations to conceive a fresh tableau of history and myth that will, once again, enthrall readers the world over.
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Author Notes
Danielle Trussoni 's novel Angelology was a New York Times bestseller and was reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review . Her memoir debut, Falling Through the Earth , was selected as one of the Ten Best Books of 2006 by The New York Times . She currently splits her time between the United States and France.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of Trussoni's well-received Angelology (2010), set in a world where angels are real, should be satisfied with this sequel, but those looking for a consistent, well-thought-out alternative universe may be disappointed. In the book's present, art historian V.A. Verlaine, who 10 years earlier realized that his flawed vision allowed him to "see angel wings without extensive training," witnesses a mutilated angel's last moments as she lies dying on a Paris street in "a pool of electric blue blood." On the body, Verlaine is disturbed to find the New York driver's license of Evangeline Cacciatore, "the love of his life," who had turned into the sort of rogue angel that Verlaine now hunts. This murder marks the latest chapter in a centuries-old battle between humanity and the various categories of angels. Suspenseful actions scenes compensate only in part for thin characters, contrived situations, and Verlaine's perplexing turnaround in his attitude toward Evangeline at the end. 5-city author tour. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This is a stunning follow-up to the best-seller Angelology. Ten years have passed since Verlaine watched his lover, Evangeline, take flight from the Brooklyn Bridge as her true self, an ancient species born of human and angel parents. Verlaine has spent the last decade learning to capture and torture all angel forms. Now, in the opening pages of Angelopolis, he is next to her again, so close he can feel the air swirling around her wings, smell the sweet fragrance of her skin. He knows he must capture, if not kill, her. Then, before his eyes, Evangeline is abducted and Verlaine is left to hunting for her and her captors. As his search progresses, the unfathomable starts to reveal itself: Evangeline's abductors have taken her to Angelopolis a mythical angel paradise. Part historical novel, fantasy, love story, thriller, and mystery all tied into one book that library patrons are sure to demand. It's a must-read.--Downs, Alison Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ANGELS do in fact walk among us, and they are not at all to be trifled with. Or at least that's the alarming state of affairs at the heart of Danielle Trussoni's 2010 best-selling novel, "Angelology." Called Nephilim, these angels - or, more properly, angel-human hybrids - are the descendants of traitorous, fallen rebel angels. No haloed guardians, these: they want nothing less than dominion over mankind. Set against them are the angelologists, a secret global group dedicated to thwarting the Nephilim's unholy ambitions. Readers flocked to Trussoni's first novel (she's also the author of a 2006 memoir, "Falling Through the Earth") for its mix of fantasy and religious conspiracy, as well as for the improbable romance between its characters: the art historian Verlaine and Evangeline, an innocent young nun. "Angelopolis" is Trussoni's tighter and more engaging sequel to "Angelology," which ended with Evangeline transformed into one of the hated Nephilim. Ten years later, Verlaine has changed almost as much as the woman he loves. Gone is the scrappy young man in Snoopy socks; in his place is a full-fledged "angel hunter," haunted by his encounter with Evangeline and tasked with killing her kind. Happily, "Angelopolis" improves upon its predecessor, which proceeded as placidly as a day at Evangeline's convent, burdened by exposition and unnecessary detail. In the new book, Trussoni fires up the engine. Verlaine and his pack of angel hunters are far more entertaining and energetic than the tweedy academics of "Angelology," who seemed intent on researching the Nephilim to death. Trussoni also expands on her mythology and populates "Angelopolis" with different classifications of angel-human descendants, all hiding in plain sight. Verlaine, it seems, has an eye defect that allows him to see angels' wings more easily than most people. It's a convenient plot device that also gives Verlaine some much-needed authority as he surveys the "congregations of Mara angels, the beautiful and doomed prostitutes whose gifts were such a temptation to humans; Gusian angels, who could divine the past and the future; the Rahab angels, broken beings who were considered the untouchables of the angelic world." The plot kicks off when Evangeline surfaces briefly in Paris. She and Verlaine exchange their first words in over a decade, and she barely has enough time to give Verlaine a mysterious Fabergé egg before the sinister and seductive angel Eno drags her off to a secret lab in Siberia. To find Evangeline, Verlaine and his colleagues must first decode the egg. The action slows for a little Dan Brownstyle schooling on Fabergé, Rasputin and the Russian Imperial family, not to mention the Elizabethan mystic John Dee, the apocryphal Book of Jubilees and the search for evidence of the biblical flood. One of Trussoni's central conceits - that the Nephilim and their secret descendants became the wealthy and powerful of Europe - makes for some entertaining alternate-history details, like the image of the Empress Alexandra preening her pink wings and teaching the little Romanovs to fly. The flood subplot also yields some interesting fruit, quite literally: in one memorable scene, the angelologists are served lunch in a secret greenhouse, where seeds rescued from the ruins of Noah's ark have been cultivated. The action travels from Paris to Russia and then to Bulgaria, accumulating bit players along the way. We meet Vera, an ambitious Russian angelologist; Dr. Azov, a scientist who works in a lighthouse and searches for evidence of the flood; and Trussoni's creepiest Nephilim to date: the Grigori twins, Armigus and Axicore. Inhumanly beautiful, elegant and sadistic, the Grigoris steal every scene they're in. They're what you'd get if you crossed Castor and Pollux with the Salamanca twins from the television drama "Breaking Bad." The dialogue is snappier in the sequel, though Trussoni's characters still wrestle with large chunks of exposition. (Variations on the leaden phrase "as you well know" are trotted out far too often.) And she gives us a number of head-scratching moments. Verlaine and his crack agents make so many rookie mistakes that guardian angels or no, something must be watching over them to have gotten them this far. We learn the origins of the disease that we first saw in "Angelology," running riot through the Nephilim and melting their wings to stubs - but it seems to contradict established events. Open traitors are tolerated in the angelologists' midst, for no good reason except that the plot requires it. It's a romp, to be sure - but think too hard about any of it, or try to square it with itself, and it'll come apart in your hands. More disappointing, the interesting, if muddled, spiritual philosophy glimpsed in the first book has been mostly abandoned. Slow and dreary "Angelology" might have been, but it had a certain gravitas, a biblical sense of good and evil. "Angelopolis," on the other hand, seems estranged from its own mythical and religious sources. In fact, the purityobsessed Nephilim, with their hightech labs and geneticists-for-hire, seem awfully like humans in their rush to abandon the spirit world for science. These angels might as well be garden-variety mutants or aliens; the apocalyptic ending just another apocalypse. Still, the ending is impressively chilling, with its showdown in a prison housing thousands of angelic creatures, the Angelopolis of the title. Trussoni describes it in terrifying terms: a tightly guarded panopticon, "a glass honeycomb, each cell crawling with an angry wasp." And the book closes on a cliffhanger that sets up a whopper of a third installment, even if the scale of the crisis doesn't feel quite earned. Which leaves the matter of Evangeline. The poor thing hardly gets any page time in "Angelopolis," which is a real shame. In the first book, Evangeline was a sheltered nun whose world was brought tumbling down, as truth after truth was revealed to her: her family's role in angelology, the reality of the Nephilim and, ultimately, her own more-than-human nature. As a result, she spent so much time being gobsmacked that she never had a chance to come into her own as a character. In the 10 years between books, she's presumably had time to come up with a few interesting observations. I can only imagine what a former nun would say about finding out she's part fallen angel, but our heroine remains strangely silent on the matter. Perhaps in the next book, in addition to the fate of humanity, we'll finally learn what makes Evangeline tick. The action travels from Paris to Russia, accumulating bit players and creepy Nephilim. Helene Wecker's first novel, "The Golem and the Jinni," was published in April.
Kirkus Review
Sequel to the best-selling Angelology (2010), wherein a dedicated cadre of Angelologists battle the beautiful yet sadomasochistically evil angel-human hybrids who've controlled human affairs since Noah's flood. In Paris, angel hunter V.A. Verlaine searches for former nun Evangeline, once a normal, wingless, red-blooded human, now somehow metamorphosed into a winged, blue-blooded, angel-powered Nephilim. Evangeline presents Verlaine with a fabulous Faberg egg before allowing herself to be captured by Eno, the blackhearted, lesser-angel servant of the Grigori family, the most powerful Nephilim. Since Eno will convey Evangeline to the panopticon, the Grigoris' vast prison/research center in Siberia where she will face torture and experimentation, the egg is an important clue. Where better to research the egg, Verlaine reasons, than the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg? The egg, it emerges, contains the secret to an elixir that may prove decisive in the struggle against the Nephilim. Another key to the elixir is found in an old album of jottings and pressed flowers left by Rasputin, but some of the plants mentioned in the recipe are now extinct. But wait! Fortunately, Noah didn't just pack all the animals aboard his ark, he also grabbed plants and seeds! So, while Verlaine climbs aboard the train to Siberia to rescue Evangeline, his colleagues head for the Black Sea, where settlements flourished before Noah's flood. The plot, of which the foregoing is barely a hint, twisting itself into knots trying, and failing, not to contradict itself, and upon which an ordinary world beyond eggs, floods, documents, battling angels, pressed flowers and what-all barely impinges. Despite the frequent violence, the action consists largely of antagonists whose main objective, seemingly, is not to defeat, kill or seriously inconvenience their opponents. Expect pages and pages of abstruse discussion about Faberg eggs, Noah, genetics and angelic anatomy. Even Angelology addicts likely face disappointment. Then again, maybe not.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In the fast-paced sequel to Trussoni's New York Times best seller Angelology, angelologist Verlaine continues to be haunted by his encounters with Evangeline, a human girl turned angel. As he combats the rising dominance of the Gregori Nephilim, their paths will cross again. In a story entangling Russia's Romanov history, modern science, and divine mysticism, listeners whirl from action sequences to unlocked secrets and back again. Trussoni takes some liberties with the traditional hierarchy of angels. Newcomers may find this confusing and should begin with the first book. Narration by Edoardo Ballerini contains numerous, believable characters and accents. verdict Recommended for larger collections, particularly where the author's previous work has been well received or where fans of Elizabeth Kostova abound. ["Trussoni's unevenly paced second offering is not quite up to the standards set by her debut novel. Exciting skirmishes and conflicts are dragged down by extensive historical explanations, and the introduction of a new major character falls flat. Despite the inconsistencies, devotees of Trussoni's first novel will enjoy this continuation of the crusade to save humankind," read the less enthusiastic review of the Viking hc, LJ 3/15/13.-Ed.]-Lisa Anderson, Omaha P.L. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
And she began to speak to me--so gently and softly--with angelic voice. --Dante, Inferno Angelopolis 33 Champ de Mars, seventh arrondissement, Paris, 1983 The scientist examined the girl, his fingers pressing into her skin. She felt his touch against her shoulder blades, the knobs of her spine, the flat of her back. The movements were deliberate, clinical, as if he expected to find something wrong with her--a thirteenth rib or a second spine growing like an iron track alongside the original. The girl's mother had told her to do as the scientist asked, and so she endured the prodding in silence: When he twisted a tourniquet around her arm she did not resist; when he traced the sinuous path of her vein with the tip of a needle she held still; when the needle slid under skin, and a rush of blood filled the barrel of the syringe, she pressed her lips together until she could no longer feel them. She watched the sunlight fall through the windows, blessing the sterile room with color and warmth, and felt a presence watching over her, as if a spirit had descended to guard her. As the scientist filled three vials with blood, she closed her eyes and thought of her mother's voice. Her mother liked to tell her stories of enchanted kingdoms and sleeping beauties and brave knights ready to fight for good; she spoke of gods who transformed into swans and beautiful boys who blossomed into flowers and women who grew into trees; she whispered that angels existed on earth as well as in heaven, and that there were some people who, like the angels, could fly. The girl always listened to these stories, never quite knowing if they were true. But there was one thing she did believe: In every fairy tale, the princess woke and the swan transformed back into Zeus and the knight overcame evil. In a moment, with a wave of a wand or the casting of a spell, the nightmare ended and a new era began. The First Circle Limbo Allée des Refuzniks, Eiffel Tower, seventh arrondissement, Paris, 2010 V.A. Verlaine pushed through the barrier of gendarmes, making his way toward the body. It was nearly midnight, the neighborhood deserted, and yet the entire perimeter of the Champ de Mars--from the quai Branly to the avenue Gustave Eiffel--had been blocked by police cars, the red and blue lights pulsing through the darkness. A floodlight had been set up in a corner of the scene, the harsh illumination revealing a mutilated body resting in a pool of electric blue blood. The features of the victim were unreadable, the body broken and bloodied, her arms and legs angling at unnatural positions like branches cracked from a tree. The phrase "ripped to shreds" passed through Verlaine's mind. He had studied the creature as it died, watching the wings unfold over its body. He'd watched it shiver with pain, listening to its sharp, animal grunts as they dulled to a weak whine. The wounds were severe--a deep cut to the head and another to the chest--and yet it seemed that the creature would never stop struggling, that its determination to survive was endless, that it would fight on and on, even as blood seeped over the ground in a thick dark syrup. Finally, a milky film had fallen over the creature's eyes, giving it the vacant stare of a lizard, and Verlaine knew the angel had died at last. As he looked over his shoulder, his jaw grew tense. Beyond the ring of police stood every variety of creature--a living encyclopedia of beings who would kill him if they knew he could see them for what they were. He paused, assuming the cold, appraising position of a scholar as he cataloged the creatures in his mind: There were congregations of Mara angels, the beautiful and doomed prostitutes whose gifts were such a temptation to humans; Gusian angels, who could divine the past and the future; the Rahab angels, broken beings who were considered the untouchables of the angelic world. He could detect the distinguishing features of Anakim angels--the sharp fingernails, the wide forehead, the slightly irregular skeletal structure. He saw it all with a relentless clarity that lingered in his mind even as he turned back to the frenzy surrounding the murder. The victim's blood had begun to seep past the contours of the floodlight, oozing into the shadows. He tried to focus upon the ironwork of the Eiffel Tower, to steady himself, but the creatures consumed his attention. He could not take his eyes off their wings fluttering against the inky darkness of the night. Verlaine had discovered his ability to see the creatures ten years before. The skill was a gift-- very few people could actually see angel wings without extensive training. As it turned out, Verlaine's flawed vision--he had worn glasses since the fifth grade and could hardly see a foot in front of himself without them--allowed light into the eye in exactly the right proportion for him to see the full spectrum of angel wings. He'd been born to be an angel hunter. Now Verlaine could not block out the colored light rising around the angelic creatures, the fields of energy that separated these beings from the flat, colorless spaces occupied by humans. He found himself tracking them as they moved around the Champ de Mars, noting their movements even while wishing to shut out their hallucinatory pull. Sometimes he was sure that he was going crazy, that the creatures were his personal demons, that he lived in a custom- made circle of hell in which an endless variety of devils were paraded before him, as if amassed for the purpose of taunting and torturing him. But these were the kinds of thoughts that could land him in a sanitarium. He had to be careful to keep his balance, to remember that he saw things at a higher frequency than normal people, that his gift was something he must cultivate and protect even as it hurt him. Bruno, his friend and mentor, the man who had brought him from New York and trained him as an angel hunter, had given him pills to calm his nerves, and although Verlaine tried to take as few as possible, he found himself reaching for an enamel box in his jacket pocket and tapping out two white pills. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. Bruno stood behind him, his expression severe. "The cuts are indicative of an Emim attack," he said under his breath. "The charred skin confirms that," Verlaine said. He unbuttoned his jacket--vintage yellow 1970s polyester sport coat of questionable taste--and stepped close to the body. "Does it have any kind of identification?" His mentor removed a wallet, its pale suede stained with blood, and began to sort through it. Suddenly Bruno's expression changed. He held up a plastic card. Verlaine took the card. It was a New York driver's license with a photo of a woman with black hair and green eyes. His heart beat hard in his chest as he realized that it belonged to Evangeline Cacciatore. He took a deep breath before turning back to Bruno. "Do you think this could really be her?" Verlaine said, watching his boss's expression carefully. He knew that everything--his relationship with Bruno, his connection to the Angelogical Society, the course of his life from that point forward--would depend upon how he handled himself in the next ten minutes. "Evangeline is a human woman; this is a blue-blooded Nephil female," Bruno replied, nodding toward the bloody corpse between them. "But be my guest." Verlaine slid his fingers between the buttons of the victim's trench coat, his hands trembling so hard he had to steady himself to make out the shape of her shoulders. The features of the woman were utterly unrecognizable. He remembered the first time he had seen Evangeline. She had been both beautiful and somber at once, looking at him with her large green eyes as if he were a thief come to steal their sacred texts. She had been suspicious of his motives and fierce in her determination to keep him out. Then he made her laugh and her tough exterior had crumbled. That moment between them had been burned into him, and no matter how he tried, he had never been able to forget Evangeline. It had been over a decade since they had stood together in the library at St. Rose Convent, books open before them, both of them unaware of the true nature of the world. "There were Giants on the Earth in those days, and after." These words, and the woman who showed them to him, had changed his life. He hadn't told anyone the truth about Evangeline. Indeed, no one knew that she was one of the creatures. For Verlaine, keeping Evangeline's secret had been an unspoken vow: He knew the truth, but he would never tell a soul. It was, he realized now, the only way to remain faithful to the woman he loved. Verlaine tucked the driver's license into his pocket and walked away. McDonald's, avenue des Champs-Élysées, first arrondissement, Paris Paris was full of angelologists and, as such, one of the most dangerous places in the universe for an Emim angel like Eno, who had a tendency toward recklessness. Like the rest of her kind, she was tall and willowy, with high cheekbones, full lips, and gray skin. She wore heavy black eye makeup, red lipstick, and black leather, and often wore her black wings openly, unafraid, daring angelologists to see them. The gesture was considered an act of provocation, but Eno didn't have any intention of hiding. This would be their world soon. The Grigoris had promised her this. Even so, there were angelologists lurking everywhere in Paris-- scholars who looked like they hadn't left the Academy of Angelology's archive in fifty years, overzealous initiates taking photographs of whatever creature they could find, angelological biologists looking for samples of angelic blood, and, worst of all as far as Eno was concerned, the teams of angel hunters out to arrest all angelic creatures. These idiots often mistook Golobiums for Emim and Emim for the more pure creatures like the Grigoris. Hunters seemed to be on every corner lately, watching, waiting, ready to take their prey into custody. For those who could detect the hunters, life in Paris was merely inconvenient. For those who could not, each movement through the city was a deadly game. Of course Eno had strict rules of engagement, and her first and most important rule was to leave the risk of being captured to others. After she had killed Evangeline, she'd removed herself from the scene quickly and walked on the Champs-Élysées, where nobody would think to look for her. She understood that sometimes it was best to hide in plain sight. Eno folded her hands around the Styrofoam cup, taking in the ceaseless motion of the Champs-Élysées. She would be going back to her masters as soon as possible now that her work in Paris was finished. She'd been assigned to find and kill a young female Nephil. She'd tracked the creature for weeks, watching her, learning her patterns of behavior. She'd become curious about her target. Evangeline was unlike any other Nephil she had seen before. According to her masters, Evangeline was a child of the Grigori, but she had none of the distinguishing characteristics of an angel of her lineage. She had been raised among regular people, had been abandoned by the Nephilim, and--from everything that Eno had observed-- was dangerously sympathetic to the ways of humanity. The Grigoris wanted Evangeline dead. Eno never let her masters down. And they, she was certain, would not let her down either. The Grigoris would take her home to Russia, where she would blend into the masses of Emim angels. In Paris, she was too conspicuous. Now that her work was done, she wanted to leave this dangerous and loathsome city. She'd learned the dangers of Parisian angelologists the hard way. Many years ago, when she was young and naïve to the ways of humans, she had nearly been killed by an angelologist. It had been the summer of 1889, during the Paris World's Fair, and people had flooded into the city to see the newly erected Eiffel Tower. She strolled through the fair and then ventured into the throngs in the fields nearby. Unlike many Emim, she adored walking among the lowly beings that populated Paris, loved to have coffee in their cafés and walk in their gardens. She liked to be drawn into the rush of human society, the exuberant energy of their futile existence. In the course of her stroll, she noticed a handsome English soldier staring at her from across the Champ de Mars. They'd spoken for some minutes about the fair, then he took her by the arm and led her past the crowds of foot soldiers, the prostitutes and scavengers, past the carriages and horses. From his soft voice and gentlemanly manner, she assumed him to be more elevated than most human beings. He held her hand gently, as if she were too delicate to touch, all the while examining her with the care of a jeweler appraising a diamond. Human desire was something she found fascinating--its intensity, the way love controlled and shaped their lives. This man desired her. Eno found this amusing. She could still recall his hair, his dark eyes, the dashing figure he cut in his suit and hat. She tried to gauge whether the man recognized her for what she was. He led her away from the crowds, and when they were alone behind a hedge, he looked into her eyes. A change came over him-- he'd been gentle and amorous, and now a wash of violence infused his manner. She marveled at his transformation, the changeable nature of human desire, the way he could love and hate her at once. Suddenly the man withdrew his dagger and lunged at her. "Beast," he hissed, as he thrust the blade at Eno, his voice filled with hatred. Eno reacted quickly, jumping aside, and the knife missed its mark: Instead of her heart, the soldier sliced a gash across her shoulder, cutting through her dress and into her body, leaving the flesh to fold away from her bone like a piece of lace. Eno had turned on him with force, crushing the bones of his throat between her fingers until his eyes hardened to pale stones. She pulled him behind the trees and destroyed all traces of what she had found beautiful in him: His lovely eyes, his skin, the delicate fleshy curl of his ear, the fingers that had--only minutes before--given her pleasure. She took the man's peacoat and draped it over her shoulders to hide her injury. What she couldn't hide was her humiliation. The cut had healed, but she was left with a scar the shape of a crescent moon. Every so often she would stand before a mirror examining the faint line, to remind herself of the treachery that humans were capable of performing. She realized, after reading an account in the newspaper, that the man was an angelologist, one of the many English agents in France in the nineteenth century. She had been led into a trap. Eno had been tricked. This man was long dead, but she could still hear his voice in her ear, the heat of his breath as he called her a beast. The word beast was embedded in her mind, a seed that grew in her, freeing her from every restraint. From that moment on her work as a mercenary began to please her more and more with each new victim. She studied the angelologists' behavior, their habits, their techniques of hunting and killing angelic beings until she knew her work in and out. She could smell a hunter, feel him, sense his desire to capture and slaughter her. Sometimes she even let them bring her into custody. Sometimes she even let them act out their fantasies with her. She let them take her to their beds, tie her up, play with her, hurt her. When the fun was over, she killed them. It was a dangerous game, but one she controlled. Eno slid on a pair of oversize sunglasses, the lenses black and bulbous. She rarely went outside without them. They disguised her large yellow eyes and her unnaturally high cheekbones--the most distinct Emim traits--so that she looked like a human female. Leaning back in her chair, she stretched her long legs and closed her eyes, remembering the terror in Evangeline's face, the resistance of the flesh as she slid her nails under the rib cage and ripped it open, the frisson of surprise Eno had felt upon seeing the first rush of blue blood spill onto the pavement. She had never killed a superior creature before, and the experience went against everything she had been trained to do. She had expected a fight worthy of a Nephil. But Evangeline had died with the pathetic ease of a human woman. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and as she reached for it, she checked the crowds walking by, her gaze flicking from humans to angels. There was only one person who used that number, and Eno needed to be certain that she could speak privately. Emim were bound by their heritage to serve Nephilim, and for years, she had simply done her duty, working for the Grigoris out of gratitude and fear. She was of a warrior caste and she accepted this fate. She wanted to do little else but to experience the slow diminishing of a life, the final gasping for breath of her victims. Fingers trembling, she took the call. She heard her master's raspy, whispery voice, a seductive voice she associated with power, with pain, with death. He said only a few words, but she knew at once-- from the way he spoke, his voice laced with poison--that something had gone wrong. Excerpted from Angelopolis by Danielle Trussoni All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
