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surveillance report on Eno suggested she was in St. Petersburg, Bruno was certain that she was the angel at the end of the street, and that she was responsible for the murder at the Eiffel Tower. Bruno recognized Eno’s signature in the brutality of the slaughter, the great skill and strength of the killer, the peculiar way the body had been mutilated. He took a deep breath and tucked his phone into his pocket. Nothing had changed. Eno was as sadistic as ever.
    In his twenties, he had come under Eno’s spell during a hunt. She was unbelievably deft at evading their best agents, a vicious Emim who had been wanted for over a hundred years, and Bruno was determined to capture her. He’d known she was deadly. One of the murdered agents cited in Eno’s profile had suffered third-degree burns over his chest, indicative of electro-induction shock, and his body had been found with rope burns to the neck, wrists, and ankles, signifying that he’d been tied up and tortured. Lacerations to the face, torso, buttocks, and back confirmed this. He had been castrated and dumped in the Seine.
    Bruno understood the kind of creature he was dealing with, but when he was near Eno, it was as if he had stepped into a field of electricity, one that made all rational thought impossible. Of course, the original attraction between the Watchers and humans was purely physical, a dark and persistent sexual allure, a phenomenon of sheer lust, something that didn’t disappear over time. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he’d fallen into a dangerous, obsessive pattern of hunting her. That he could lose his place in the society, that he could be disgraced or even killed—all of this had faded in the pursuit of Eno. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what interested Bruno. There was something hypnotic about her very existence, something dangerous and exciting about the knowledge of what she would try to do to him if he succeeded in capturing her. She made him feel alive even as she planned to kill him.

Passage de la Vierge, seventh arrondissement, Paris
    V erlaine climbed onto the ledge of a window, grasped the iron bars of the balcony, and, swinging his legs to gain momentum, pulled himself up toward the rooftop, the soles of his wing tips slipping as he climbed. He took a breath and continued. There were four more balconies above him, each one just out of reach, each one a step closer to Evangeline. He could see her there, above, perched on the roof tiles like a gargoyle.
    By the time he’d hoisted himself over the balustrade of the final balcony, his muscles burned. The resistance felt good. His body was lean, his muscles tight and long, his endurance high. He would be forty-three years old in less than a week and he was in the best condition of his life, able to run for miles without breaking a sweat. Verlaine threw one leg over the ironwork balustrade and pushed himself onto the slate-roof tiles.
    The Emim angel swooped past him, the wings brushing against his back as she flew into the sky. He felt the shiver of air against his skin, felt the strength of the creature’s body as it slid past. If he were to grab her wings, she would take him with her into the air. He watched her twist upward, the lights and rooftops of Paris stretching beyond. As the Emim angel lowered herself to the rooftop, Evangeline rose. Soon the two creatures stood at the center of the rooftop, one facing the other, their wings moving in time.
    There was no doubt in Verlaine’s mind that the Emim was an exceptionally powerful angel. There was a rarefied, ghostly transparency to her skin and a certain distinction to her carriage that marked her as the higher order of warriors. As he examined the creature’s bone structure and facial features he saw that everything—her large, alien eyes and her sinuous body—coalesced to form a strange and inhuman beauty. One rarely came across such a striking Emim. He took a deep breath and wondered what kind of god would