Verlaine tucked his hand deep into his coat, obscuring it from view. “Where’s that?” he asked.
“About fifteen miles south in Milton,” the driver said, looking him over. “Looks like you’ve had a hell of a day. Hop in.”
They drove for fifteen minutes before the truck driver pulled over, letting him off on a quaint, snowy main street with a stretch of small shops. The street was utterly deserted, as if the entire town had shut down due to the snowstorm. The shop windows were dark and the parking lot before the post office empty. A small tavern on a corner, a beer sign illuminated in the window, gave the only sign of life.
Verlaine checked his pockets, feeling for his wallet and keys. He’d buttoned the envelope of cash into an interior pocket of his sport jacket. Removing the envelope, he checked to be sure he hadn’t lost the money. To his relief, it was all there. His anger grew, however, at the thought of Grigori. What had he been doing, working for a guy who would track him down, bust up his car, and scare the hell out of him? Verlaine was beginning to wonder if he’d been crazy for getting involved with Percival Grigori at all.
The Grigori penthouse, Upper East Side, New York City
The Grigori family had acquired the penthouse in the late 1940s from the debt-ridden daughter of an American tycoon. It was large and magnificent, much too big for a bachelor with an aversion to large parties, and so it had come as something of a relief when Percival’s mother and Otterley began to occupy the upper floors. When he had lived there alone, he had spent hours alone playing billiards, the doors closed to the movement of servants brushing through the corridors. He would draw the heavy green velvet drapes, turn the lamps low, and drink scotch as he aligned shot after shot, aiming the cue and slamming the polished balls into netted pockets.
As time passed, he remodeled various rooms of the apartment but left the billiard room exactly as it had been in the 1940s-slightly tattered leather furniture, the transmitter-tube radio with Bakelite buttons, an eighteenth-century Persian rug, an abundance of musty old books filling the cherrywood shelves, hardly any of which he had attempted to read. The volumes were purely decorative, admired for their age and value. There were calf-bound volumes pertaining to the origins and exploits of his many relations-histories, memoirs, epic novels of battle, romances. Some of these books had been shipped from Europe after the war; others were acquired from a venerable book dealer in the neighborhood, an old friend of the family transplanted from London. The man had a sharp sense for what the Grigori family most desired-tales of European conquest, colonial glory, and the civilizing power of Western culture.
Even the distinctive smell of the billiard room remained the same-soap and leather polish, a faint hint of cigar. Percival still relished whiling away the hours there, calling every so often for the maid to bring him a fresh drink. She was a young Anakim female who was wonderfully silent. She would place a glass of scotch next to him and sweep the empty glass away, making him comfortable with practiced efficiency. With a flick of his wrist, he would dismiss the servant, and she would disappear in an instant. It pleased him that she always left quietly, closing the wide wooden doors behind her with a soft click.
Percival maneuvered himself onto a stuffed armchair, swirling the scotch in its cut-crystal glass. He straightened his legs-slowly, gently-onto an ottoman. He thought of his mother and her complete disregard for his efforts in getting them this far. That he had obtained definite information about St. Rose Convent should have given her faith in him. Instead Sneja had instructed Otterley to oversee the creatures she’d sent upstate.
Taking a sip of scotch, Percival tried to telephone his sister. When Otterley did not pick up, he checked his watch, annoyed. She should have called by now.
For all her faults, Otterley was like their father-punctual, methodical, and utterly reliable under pressure. If Percival knew her, she had consulted with their father in London and had drawn up a plan to contain and eliminate Verlaine. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if his father had outlined the plan from his office, giving Otterley whatever she needed to execute his wishes. Otterley was his father’s favorite. In his eyes she could do nothing wrong.
Looking at his watch again, Percival saw that only two minutes had passed. Perhaps something had happened to warrant Otterley’s silence. Perhaps their efforts had been thwarted. It wouldn’t be the first time they had been lured into a seemingly innocuous situation only to be cornered.
He felt his legs pulsing and shaking, as if the muscles rebelled against repose. He took another sip of scotch, willing it to calm him, but nothing worked when he was in such a state. Leaving his cane behind, Percival drew himself up from the chair and hobbled to a bookshelf, where he removed a calf-bound volume and placed it gently upon the billiard table. The spine creaked when he pressed the cover open, as if the binding might pop apart. Percival had not opened The Book of Generations in many, many years, not since the marriage of one of his cousins had sent him searching for family connections on the bride’s side-it was always awkward to arrive at a wedding and be at a loss for who mattered and who did not, especially when the bride was a member of the Danish royal family.
The Book of Generations was an amalgamation of history, legend, genealogy, and prediction pertaining to his kind. All Nephilistic children received an identical calf-bound volume at the end of their schooling, a kind of parting gift. The stories told of battle, of the founding of countries and kingdoms, of the binding together in pacts of loyalty, of the Crusades, of the knighthoods and quests and bloody conquests-these were the great stories of Nephilistic lore. Percival often wished that he had been born in those times, when their actions were not so visible, when they were able to go about their business quietly, without the danger of being monitored. Their power had been able to grow with the aid of silence, each victory building upon the one that came before. The legacy of his ancestors was all there, recorded in The Book of Generations.
Percival read the first page, filled with bold script. There was a list of names documenting the sprawling history of the Nephilistic bloodline, a catalog of families that began at the time of Noah and branched into ruling dynasties. Noah’s son Japheth had migrated to Europe, his children populating Greece, Parthia, Russia, and northern Europe and securing their family’s dominance. Percival’s family was descended directly from Javan, Japheth’s fourth son, the first to colonize the “Isles of the Gentiles,” which some took to mean Greece and others believed to be the British Isles. Javan had six brothers, whose names were recorded in the Bible, and a number of sisters, whose names were not recorded, all of whom created the basis of their influence and power throughout Europe. In many ways The Book of Generations was a recapitulation of the history of the world. Or, as modern Nephilim preferred to think, the survival of the fittest.
Looking over the list of families, Percival saw that their influence had once been absolute. In the past three hundred years, however, Nephilistic families had fallen into decline. Once there had been a balance between human and Nephilim. After the Flood they’d been born in almost equal numbers. But Nephilim were deeply attracted to humans and had married into human families, causing the genetic dilution of their most potent qualities. Now Nephilim possessing predominantly human characteristics were common, while those who had pure angelic traits were rare.
With thousands of humans born for every one Nephilim, there was some debate among good families about the relevance of their human-born relations. Some wished to exclude them, push them further into the human realm, while others believed in their value, or at least their use to the larger cause. Cultivating relations with the human members of Nephilim families was a tactical move, one that might yield great results. A child born to Nephilim parents, without the slightest trace of angelic traits, might in turn produce a Nephilistic offspring. It was an uncommon occurrence, to be sure, but not unheard of To address this possibility, the Nephilim observed a tiered system, a caste relating not to wealth or social status-although these criteria mattered as well-but to physical traits, to breeding, to a resemblance to their ancestors, a group of angels called the Watchers. While humans carried the genetic potential to create a Nephilistic child, the Nephilim themselves embodied the angelic ideal. Only a Nephilistic being could develop wings. And Percival’s had been the most magnificent anyone had seen in half a millennium.