Fury (14 page)

He knows as well as I do that Nuriel doesn’t lie. She can’t. It’s not the way she’s wired. She’s quick-witted and resourceful, but also gentle, true and faithful. Her one flaw, if you can call it that, is that she possesses no capacity for deceit. I see him thinking all of this, hardly daring to believe.

‘You …
love
… me?’ he whispers. ‘Even after …?’

‘I will give myself to you freely, and in love,’ I murmur, my dark eyes huge and haunted in my heart-shaped face, ‘if you promise not to bind me to that rock again. I shall be yours, yours forever, if you keep me safe from that animal Remiel, if you keep me close.’

‘What are you asking?’ Ananel says as I drift closer to him, tantalisingly close. Close enough to touch my lips to his.

He is between me and the rock now. He is one of Luc’s fiercest
daemonium
, one of the original hundred who fell, more than my match in every way — but I think I actually see uncertainty in his grey eyes.

‘Take me,’ I murmur, mere centimetres from his mouth. My voice is low with a desire I do not feel, and my eyes never leave his for an instant, the way one must keep watch upon a venomous snake that is poised to strike. ‘Keep me,’ I whisper. ‘Kiss me.’

He reaches out, almost despite himself, and cups the side of my face with one hand before tangling his fingers into the roots of my hair and pulling me close. Our lips meet and his mouth opens over mine, and his kiss is like a numbing, drugging venom that is turning me to lead. He is heat and corruption and a voracious need, every dark impulse clothed in a staggering beauty.

I can’t keep my eyes open. There’s a heaviness in my limbs, a growing paralysis, and as he deepens his devastating kiss, I feel myself changing, the false face and form I’ve assumed sloughing away like dead skin. I can’t hold it, can’t hold any thought or feel anything except his mouth on mine and the terrible heat and power of him. My stupid plan — I can feel it all rapidly going to hell, as defiance, my will, seep away beneath the relentlessness of his mouth, his touch. Somehow I can see everything that he’s ever done, felt, thought, caused, over aeons. I know him for what he is, and he is truly a monster.

Ananel thrusts me away from him suddenly, though he keeps one hand buried in the roots of my own straight, dark hair. I open my eyes with difficulty. His own eyes are wide with shock and a growing recognition as he holds me away from him.

‘Who —’ he gasps.

Before he can say anything more, or begin to utter my name — my true name, which can be used as a means of control, as a weapon against me — there’s a blazing short sword in my left hand, a twisted, lethal blade with pale blue fire playing across its length. Without hesitation, with the speed of reflex born of a terrible fear, a soul-deep disgust, I drive it straight through his throat and into the rock behind him, pinning him there.

‘
H
—’ he starts to say, his grey eyes wide and staring as the dark matter of him, his dark energy, flows rapidly out of him into the water, like blood. I am covered in it and imagine I feel it burning me, like acid.

The light of accusation in Ananel’s gaze is dimming as Nuriel reappears at my side. I only realise now how badly I’m shaking. I’ve just taken a life; a terrible perversion to be sure, but still a
life
. The first I have ever reaped.

As we watch Ananel begin to unravel before our eyes, both our faces are filled with horror at the thing that I’ve become. At once
elohim
, but also liar; seductress; killer.

When Nuriel and I break the choppy surface of the lake, there’s a small boat maybe thirty feet away, buffeted by the waves, motor running. It makes straight for us as I pull Nuriel free of the strange currents that seek to hold us below. I recognise Bianca St Alban at the tiller, in a dark rain slicker, her sleek, dark hair bundled into a heavy plait that lies over one shoulder. Ryan is balanced in the bow.

We wait, drifting just above the waterline, our feet not quite meeting the surface. I see awe mingled with fear on Bianca’s face as the runabout draws closer. There’s recognition, too. She
did
see me that night at Atelier Re, the way she’d claimed to. I had somehow pulled free of Irina Zhivanevskaya’s body, just for a moment, and she caught a glimmer of me, a glimpse.

I tighten my grip on Nuriel, murmuring in her ear so that she understands, through the haze of her pain, what I’m asking her to do. As the boat moves alongside us, we make ourselves wingless and human-sized, so as not to overwhelm Bianca and Ryan. We wear the simple, sleeveless raiment that we always effect when we are ourselves.

Ryan leans out to help Nuriel aboard, and looks as if he’s going to be sick when he takes in the number and severity of her injuries. No mortal could survive what she has survived.

Bianca spreads a blanket hastily along one bench seat and Nuriel lies down upon it silently, curling herself into a tight ball before closing her eyes. The light of her dims, fading until her skin is almost matte, almost human, and only I can see the luminosity that seeps slowly out through her pores.

So quickly that none except me caught the shift, she has changed her outward appearance so that she’s wearing the same pale blue puffy down jacket, blue jeans and snow boots I first saw her in, outside Atelier Re. The same Fair Isle knitted cap is jammed low over her long, wavy, dark hair. She looks almost peaceful lying there, as if she’s asleep. But I know that it’s a sham, that she’s holding all her hurt inside. Her wounds are still there, disguised beneath her unremarkable veneer. Though her eyes are closed, her suffering is so tangible, it’s leaching into the air.

Ryan holds out his hand to me, but I shake my head. His eyes go flat and he is instantly wary and still. ‘Don’t,’ he says fiercely.

‘I need to take care of one more thing,’ I plead. ‘I’ll explain later. Get her back to shore? Keep her safe?
For me?
’

He nods tightly, muttering, ‘Isn’t it always? But yeah, sure. Whatever.’

Before he can say anything more, before I can lose my nerve, I dive back below the surface of the water, shedding shape and colour as I go.

I’m almost too late.

Remiel is already at the rock, witnessing the last vestiges of Ananel’s energy melting away into the dark water. In seconds, all that remains is the blazing weapon I used to kill him, its twisted, lethal blade still embedded in the stone, almost up to the hilt.

Remiel pulls the weapon free, trying to determine its make and maker, cursing as it flares brightly in his hand before it, too, scatters into nothingness. And I’m reminded, suddenly, that only the one who created such a weapon can hold it.

He gives no sign that he can sense me. But he’s wily, and his power has been fully renewed. As I drift closer, he turns suddenly, his great hands reaching through the water, twisting into me, the stuff of which I’m made, seeking to hold me fast though he can’t see me. I twist and struggle, as invisible as the current, as he roars, ‘
Appare!
’
Show yourself!

And despite everything that I am, everything I’ve regained, his voice is like a terrible invocation that cannot be disobeyed. I am suddenly there before him, in the water.

For a moment, we are eye to burning eye. I glare into pupils the colour of molten silver. The eyes of an animal, or a ghoul.

One of his great hands is around my neck and I can’t pull free of his fingers; it’s like they’re knotted in me, as if he’s merging into me the way he forced himself upon Nuriel, and all I can feel, hear, see, is
pain
.

With his other hand, he keeps my slender wrists imprisoned upright between our two bodies, so that it’s impossible to manifest any kind of blade against him. If I do, he will use my own weapon against me.

I see the moment of recognition dawn in his eyes. His lips draw away from his teeth, beginning to form my name, as Ananel tried to. The pain in me seems to treble, to explode. If he utters my name, I will be powerless to do anything. The punishment that Ananel promised Nuriel will be mine.

Remiel still holds my wrists imprisoned. He’s too close for me to use a blade, too close.

Time seems to speed up and slow down all at once as I watch his mouth form the first syllable: ‘Han—’

Hell roars open in my head, as though every part of me is rejecting the name that is as much a part of me as the light. My soul, my very soul, is tearing apart at the sound of my own name.

Suddenly, as though answering my need for a weapon, there’s a gun in my hands: sleek and heavy, with the look of a semi-automatic about it. A perfect replica of the real thing, requiring no speed, no strength, no
finesse
to wield. Only proximity and dumb luck.

I am fear, I am disgust, as I force the muzzle up underneath Remiel’s jaw, then pull the trigger. A single shot, the bullet as deadly as any cutting surface I ever devised. It blows him away, and a blast wave of heat and energy and dark matter knocks me to the lake floor.

When I open my eyes, there’s nothing left of him. All that heat, all that venom, that negative energy, already returned to the universe, already dispersed.

I stare at the gun in my hand, catching a rivulet of blue flame playing quickly across its surface before it disappears. Just a single lick of fire, the only sign it is not a weapon of this world. Then I let the gun fall from my trembling fingers, revolted, and it, too, disperses, melting away into the water.

My head breaks the surface of the seething water near the jetty, and I see Ryan waiting for me, sitting with his back against one of the pylons, his cap pulled down low against the wind, the hood of his sweater pulled tight over its crown, knees up under his chin, just staring out over the lake like a statue. He is the living embodiment of everything that’s good about this world, and something catches in me when I see him.

I pull myself out of the water so silently that he gives a yell when he realises what he’s seeing.

‘Christ, Mercy,’ he says as I lie down beside him in my true form, but human-sized. ‘
What happened to you?
’ He bends low over me, but even then the wind rips the words out of his mouth. ‘It’s been hours. It’s almost midnight. I’ve been out of my head …’

I crawl into his arms and just lie there for a while, my bone-dry skin gleaming white-hot in the absolute absence of light. There’s a dark, building belly of cloud overhead, roiling like smoke, like a live thing. I can’t seem to put my horror into words; at what was almost done to me, what
I
did. Without hesitation.

I’m a killer
. Only chance separates me from the creatures that Ananel and Remiel became.

‘What happened?’ Ryan insists, turning my face up to his.

When I still don’t reply, unable to force the words past my lips for fear I will see revulsion on his face in place of that steady, anchoring love, Ryan stands suddenly, bends down and swings me into his arms.

‘
Let me
,’ he says fiercely, looking down at me as I struggle. ‘You think it’s been easy for me to let you just walk away? Help me salvage a little pride here. It scares me when you’re like this, all frozen, with that look on your face. Don’t shut me out. Talk to me, damn it.
Come back to me
, the way you said you would.’

I stare at my hands, imagining the blood of demons on them.

Ryan strides down the jetty and up a set of stone stairs, talking rapidly as he goes. ‘You know the thing that gets me the most? Is that you don’t actually
need
me. In this entire scenario, I — am — completely — unnecessary.’

He’s almost roaring the words, and I know I deserve his anger. He waits for me faithfully, holding out for love and forever after, and what do I do? Act as if I can neither see him nor hear him, like he’s invisible.

‘You’re necessary,’ I croak, so quietly that he snaps, ‘
What?
’

‘Necessary,’ I repeat through the strange knot in my throat. ‘You’re necessary. To me. Without you, I’d go mad. Without you, I’d have no compass.’

His arms around me suddenly seem less rigid, but his voice is still angry. ‘Welcome back.’

He crosses the deserted street running in front of the enormous cast-iron lower gates to the St Alban estate. Still holding me off the ground, he punches the buzzer set into an intercom panel identical to the one at the villa’s main entrance. No one demands that we state our business this time; the huge gates just swing open, shutting smoothly behind us once we’re through.

It’s only a short walk to the guesthouse, which is no longer ablaze with light. Ryan sets me gently down on my feet at the front door. But before he can ring the bell, Bianca yanks the door open, her pale blue eyes tracking me fearfully as Ryan and I cross the threshold.

The house is overheated, the air heavy with the scent of burning incense as if this were the inside of a church.

Ryan pushes his hood back, stuffs his cap into a jacket pocket, as Bianca mutters, ‘
I remember you
. From Atelier Re. You were the … the … woman I saw. I wasn’t imagining things. You’re
real
.’

She circles in front of me, slender and slightly above average in height, with an oval face and dark, perfectly arched brows, light olive skin. In her simple, grey crew-neck sweater and black skinny jeans, her face free of make-up, feet bare, dark, glossy hair still bound in a heavy plait, she looks even younger today than the spoilt-looking couture client I remember.

She stretches a hand out tentatively, as if she would touch me, before catching herself and lowering it. ‘Tomaso is literally
freaking out
,’ she murmurs, unable to take her eyes off my shifting, blurring outline, the curls of energy that I give off into the surrounding dimness. ‘After I told him I’d take care of the security at this end on my own, he’s had me checking in every ten minutes. Now that you’re both back inside, maybe he’ll get off my case. She’s … through there,’ she adds hesitantly, pointing down the long, narrow hall. ‘Excuse me while I call him.’

She flips her plait over one shoulder and hurries into a room just to the left of the front door. I hear her lift the handset of a phone.

Ryan takes my hand firmly in his as we head down the corridor, which is lit only by lamplight. I see several more rooms facing onto the hallway from either side, each generously proportioned and elegantly furnished, with modern pieces interleaved with antiques and arresting artworks. The wind rattles the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominate the lake-facing rooms, shrieks at the skylights set at intervals into the unusually pitched roof.

We stop at the end of the hall and gaze into a vast informal dining area. It’s separated by a wall of glass from an even larger outside pool and entertainment area that overlooks the lake below. Beyond the dining area is another short hallway that peters out into darkness. One level down from the dining area, accessed by a set of open ironwork stairs, is a sunken living room filled with broad, comfortable couches and groupings of lamps, games tables and armchairs. I see stereo equipment; shelving overflowing with reading material, records, compact discs and board games; a television the size of a small billboard; a vintage pinball machine.

More stairs lead down from the recessed living area into darkness, and it’s clear that there’s more to the house than meets the eye, that there must be yet more rooms, more levels, below ground. But the wondrous, mazelike steel-and-glass house is nothing in comparison to the tall, pale, dark-haired figure lying on a couch in the centre of the sunken living room, the faintest telltale gleam coming off the surface of her skin, the ends of her hair, her ridiculous knitted hat, her clothes, her booted feet.

I see that her eyes are wide open. She’s staring up through the clear skylight above her head as if she’s communicating with spirits. I follow the line of her gaze and watch the unnatural progress of the dark clouds that have swallowed the moon, the entire shining firmament in which it resides.

Ryan can read my incredible tension and he squeezes my hand, indicating wordlessly that I should go to Nuriel, that what he and I have to say to each other can wait. As I walk away from him towards the stairs, he draws out a seat at the dining table with a loud scrape of chair legs, and I hear him unzip his leather jacket. I turn my head for a moment, get a glimpse of the screen of his mobile phone flaring into life, before I begin to descend. The wind booms hollowly as I get closer and closer to the one I once considered my dearest friend in life.

Nuriel shifts her shattered gaze to mine as I settle lightly on the edge of the couch beside her. We look at each other for a long time, unsmiling, almost in disbelief at finding ourselves together like this, after all that’s happened.

She breaks the silence first, whispering, ‘You know what the hardest thing was? That you never recognised me. Not once, in all those years, all those times I watched over you. I could see
you
, but it was like you were a witless, soulless … wraith. It was only when you were Irina, and I looked into your eyes on Via Borgonuovo, that I saw … recognition. You can’t know how that felt. To finally have confirmation that some part of
you
had survived your long ordeal.’

‘Raphael did his work too well,’ I reply quietly. ‘If Luc had not begun seizing the Eight, one by one, I would still be trapped in the manner Raphael devised centuries ago.’

I take her hand and she grips mine fiercely for a second, before the pressure of her hold slackens.

‘He loved you,’ she murmurs, her eyes huge with pain in her pale face. ‘He always has.’

‘So I’m told,’ I reply quietly, seeing Raphael the way he was: sable-eyed, dark-haired, olive-skinned, ready laughter curving the lines of his beautiful mouth.

I get a sudden flash of true memory: of Raphael’s hands upon me, his voice warning me against Luc’s towering vanity, his terrible pride; how, in the end, I would be hurt. I must not have listened. For another memory follows quickly on the heels of the first: of Raphael facing me across a great distance. He was standing just behind Michael’s shoulder when Luc uttered those final, fatal words, my left hand clenched tightly in his right:
Then, as an act of faith — of goodwill, shall we call it — take that which is most precious to me. I permit it
.

And, as if I’m actually there, somehow reliving the moment, I suddenly see how Raphael’s eyes flew wide, how he divined Luc’s intent before any of us could have. See, too, that he was unable to act in time to prevent what took place. He and Michael had both started forward — like sprinters leaping away at the starter’s gun — trying to catch hold of me. But I was already gone, already lost, the instant Luc cast me down with every ounce of his strength.

How blind I was then, how blind. So undeserving of the love, the web of protection, these
elohim
wove about me all the long years after.

Nuriel turns her head away, curling over in agony, and the past instantly dissolves. ‘I imagined,’ she gasps, ‘that when we met again face to face, and you knew me for who I am, everything would be all right again in my world. It would all be the way it was, it would all be
fixed
.’

She gives a laugh that is one-part madness, and as she turns her face back to mine, I see with horror that she’s
weeping
, the way I’ve learnt to do.

Tears of light course down her face as she cries, ‘I’m not as strong as you are. I don’t think I can survive this. For years, I watched you suffer in this human world as an animal suffers — with just your native arrogance, your indomitable will, to keep you alive. And yet, you remain; you are essentially yourself. Shining and whole, despite the cruelties you have suffered, all the unspeakable things that befell you. As strong and fast, as fierce, as you ever were.’

As she speaks, her form ripples, changes, and she lies before me hatless, bare-limbed in her rent and sleeveless shift. My hands fly to my mouth as I catalogue her wounds that are no longer hidden from sight. There are the marks of demonic weapons upon her flesh, terrible burns; it’s as if she’s been mauled by wild animals. She’s bleeding light, scarcely alive, and I’m so shocked, I can’t think or speak or move.

She rears up and grabs hold of my upper arms, her self-loathing so evident and so potent, I wish I could take it all upon myself.

‘I want to die,’ she pleads. ‘
Die
. Or at least be granted the kind of mercy you’ve had to endure — freedom from memory, from all comprehension. Teach me how it’s possible to forget, for I can no longer heal myself. I have lost the art. I feel no forgiveness, no love. I’m
empty
.’ Harsh sobs rack her gleaming, bleeding form in earnest as she falls back from me.

I place my hands on either side of her face and feel her wildness slowly begin to abate. ‘I’m a strange hybrid these days,’ I whisper. ‘Corrupted, debased, weakened. Luc said so himself. You don’t want to be like me.’

‘And yet you slew Ananel,’ she murmurs, almost accusingly. ‘I saw you do it.’

‘And Remiel, too,’ I reply fiercely.

Her eyes fly to mine.

‘He is finished,’ I say. ‘He will never trouble you again.’

Her gaze grows unfocused. ‘Except in nightmare,’ she whispers, ‘for he will always be alive there.’

‘Stalking the corridors of your dreams?’ I murmur. ‘Yes, I know. But that is all they are: dreams. Just distant echoes.’

I speak more confidently than I’m feeling, for my dreams have always troubled me, have always seeped beyond the boundaries of unreal into
real
.

I stroke her dark, curling hair away from her forehead. ‘I can’t heal those kinds of wounds,’ I say softly. ‘Only time can do that. To be in this world is to suffer cruelty and beauty every minute of every hour. But you just hold on to the beauty and try to let the rest of it … I don’t know … wash away. That’s what I’ve learnt. You need simply to
be
. You need beauty and stillness and time. That’s all the wisdom that I, who was never wise, can offer you.’

She closes her eyes and, little by little, as I continue to comfort her, the physical marks of her suffering melt away, until, on the outside, she seems as glorious and perfect as she ever was. But underneath, something’s shifted, something’s given way, and she will never be quite the same again. It’s a feeling I myself know only too well: how life itself is an affliction that can harden you like a diamond.

‘How I’ve missed you,’ she says raggedly. ‘You should never have left us, left
me
. Not like that. It changed everything.’