He turned the pages of The Book of Generations, stopping randomly at a middle section of the book. There was an etching of a noble merchant dressed in velvets and silks, a sword cocked in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. An endless procession of women and slaves knelt around him, awaiting his command, and a concubine stretched out upon a divan at his side, her arms draped over her body. Caressing the picture, Percival read a one-line biography of the merchant describing him “as an elusive nobleman who organized fleets to all corners of the uncivilized world, colonizing wilderness and organizing the natives.” So much had changed in the past three hundred years, so many parts of the globe subdued. The merchant would not recognize the world they lived in today.
Turning to another page, Percival happened upon one of his favorite tales in the book, the story of a famous uncle on his father’s side-Sir Arthur Grigori, a Nephilim of great wealth and renown whom Percival recalled as a marvelous storyteller. Born in the early seventeenth century, Sir Arthur had made wise investments in many of the nascent shipping companies of the British Empire. His faith in the East India Company alone had brought him enormous profit-as his manor house and his cottage and his farmlands and his city apartments could well attest. While he was never directly involved in overseeing his business ventures abroad, Percival knew that his uncle had undertaken journeys around the globe and had amassed a great collection of treasures. Travel had always given him great pleasure, especially when he explored the more exotic corners of the planet, but his primary motive for distant excursion had been business. Sir Arthur had been known for his Svengali-like ability to convince humans to do all he asked of them. Percival arranged the book in his lap and read:
Sir Arthur’s ship arrived just weeks after the infamous uprising of May 1857. From the seas to the Gangetic Plain, in Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior, the Revolt spread, wreaking discord among the hierarchies that governed the land. Peasants overtook their masters, killing and maiming the British with sticks and sabers and whatever weapons they could make or steal to suit their treachery. In Kanpur it was reported that two hundred European women and children were massacred in a single morning, while in Delhi peasants spread gunpowder upon the streets until they appeared covered in pepper. One imbecilic fellow lit a match for his bidi, blowing all and sundry to pieces.
Sir Arthur, seeing that the East India Company had fallen into chaos and fearing that his profits would be affected, called the Governor-General to his apartments one afternoon to discuss what might be done between them to rectify the terrible events. The Governor-General, a portly, pink man with a penchant for chutney, arrived in the hottest hour of the day, a flock of children about him-one holding the umbrella, another holding a fan, and yet another balancing a glass of iced tea upon a tray. Sir Arthur received him with the shades drawn, to keep away the glare of both the sun and curious passersby.
“I must say, Governor-General,” Sir Arthur began, “a revolt is no great greeting.”
“No, sir,” the Governor-General replied, adjusting a polished gold monocle over a bulbous blue eye. “And it is no great farewell, either.”
Seeing that they understood one another very well, the men discussed the matter. For hours they dissected the causes and effects of the revolt. In the end Sir Arthur had a suggestion. “There must be an example made,” he said, drawing a long cigar from a balsam box and lighting it with a lighter, an imprint of the Grigori family crest etched upon its side. “It is essential to drive fear into their hearts. One must create a spectacle that will terrify them into compliance. Together we will choose a village. When we are through with them, there will be no more revolts.”
While the lesson Sir Arthur taught the British soldiers was well known in Nephilistic circles-indeed, they had been practicing such fear-generating tactics privately for many hundreds of years-it was rarely used on such a large group. Under Sir Arthur’s deft command, the soldiers rounded up the people of the chosen village-men, women, and children-and brought them to the market. He chose a child, a girl with almond eyes, silken black hair, and skin the color of chestnuts. The girl gazed curiously at the man, so tall and fair and gaunt, as if to say, Even among the peculiar-looking British, this man is odd. Yet she followed after him, obedient.
Oblivious to the stares of the natives, Sir Arthur led the child before the prisoners of war-as the villagers were now called-lifted her into his arms, and deposited her into the barrel of a loaded cannon. The barrel was long and wide, and it swallowed the child entirely-only her hands were visible as they clung tight to the iron rim, holding it as if it were the top of a well into which she might sink.
“Light the fuse,” Sir Grigori commanded. As the young soldier, his fingers trembling, struck a match, the girl’s mother cried out from the crowd.
The explosion was the first of many that morning. Two hundred village children-the exact number of British killed in the Kanpur massacre-were led one by one to the cannon. The iron grew so hot that it charred the fingers of the soldiers dropping the heavy bundles of wiggling flesh, all hair and fingernails, into the shaft. Restrained at gunpoint, the villagers watched. Once the bloody business was through, the soldiers turned their muskets upon the villagers, ordering them to clean the market courtyard. Pieces of their children hung upon the tents and bushes and carts. Blood stained the earth orange.
News of the horror soon spread to the nearby villages and from those villages to the Gangetic Plain, to Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior. The Revolt, as Sir Arthur Grigori had foretold, quieted.
Percival’s reading was interrupted by the sound of Sneja’s voice as she leaned over his shoulder. “Ah, Sir Arthur,” she said, the shadow of her wings falling over the pages of the book. “He was one of the finest Grigoris, my favorite of your father’s brothers. Such valor! He secured our interests across the globe. If only his end had been as glorious as the rest of his life.”
Percival knew that his mother was referring to Uncle Arthur’s sad and pathetic demise. Sir Arthur had been one of the first in their family to contract the illness that now afflicted Percival. His once-glorious wings had withered to putrid, blackened nubs, and after a decade of terrible suffering his lungs had collapsed. He had died in humiliation and pain, succumbing to the disease in the fifth century of life, a time when he should have been enjoying his retirement. Many had believed the illness to be the result of his exposure to various lower breeds of human life-the wretched natives in the various colonial ports-but the truth of the matter was that the Grigoris did not know the origin of the illness. They knew only that there may be a way to cure it.
In the 1980s Sneja had come into possession of a human scientist’s body of work devoted to the therapeutic properties of certain varieties of music. The scientist had been named Angela Valko and was the daughter of Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko, one of the most renowned angelologists working in Europe. According to Angela Valko’s theories, there was a way to restore Percival, and all their kind, to angelic perfection.