Fury (15 page)

She opens her eyes and they seem a little clearer now, a little calmer. ‘As damaged as you claim to be, you’ve done what few
elohim
have achieved while sane, whole and in the fullness of their power: you’ve taken down two of Luc’s inner circle. While the lower-order
daemonium
can always be … replenished,’ her mouth twists in revulsion, ‘in a way that the
elohim
and
malakhim
may not, Remiel and Ananel were irreplaceable to Luc. Pray he does not know it yet, but you’ve hurt him, you’ve struck back.’ She sits up slowly, the shadow of a smile upon her lips. ‘You are a force for good these days, whether you like it or not.’

She grasps my hands tightly, her voice urgent. ‘Free Selaphiel. He was the first to be taken. I
saw
the place in Remiel’s mind, in Ananel’s — they could not keep it from me when they, when they …’ She grips my fingers harder. ‘It was the place you took yourself to … to die.
That
is where they hold him. In an empire of death, ruled by bones. Underground. Do you remember it?’ she finishes hesitantly.

I recoil from her, horror-struck, as I get a flash of that place, located far, far beneath an old human city. Above ground, the living had scratched out a mean, jammed existence, infecting each other with their uproars and grievances and foul pestilences. Below ground, there had been a blessed, blessed silence, but also chambers and passageways filled with water and putrescence, piled high with the jumbled bones of the human dead: skulls and femurs, finger bones and vertebrae, fat, hair, skin, gristle, all mixed and intermingled. The worldly remains of
thousands
. The scent of death that lay so heavily upon me, it lay upon that place, too. The carrion stench of it had seemed to reach its fingers up through the city and beyond. It was what drew me there in the first instance, that smell of death. To the creature of nightmare that I was — a burnt and blasted thing, barely alive, a being composed solely of ash and anguish — it had seemed a fitting place to end it all.

But the Eight had run me to ground there, at long last. And They’d forced me to
live
.

‘I see it even now,’ I whisper. ‘If Hell had a gateway, it would be that place. But I cannot recall the name of the human city it formed part of. It’s as if the name has been burnt out of my memory … by me? By others? Who can say?’

‘Paris,’ Nuriel replies harshly. ‘The Eight found you in Paris. At Cimetière des Innocents. Ananel and Remiel were with Luc when he located the burial chamber where you’d lain only hours before. But nothing of you remained, and Luc’s fury was terrible as he tore apart gravesite after gravesite, chamber after chamber, looking for traces of you, unleashing a powerful plague into the ground water, into the very soil, to sicken all of Paris itself. It is what he does best, after all — come at us from below, from the dark.’

I try to pull away from Nuriel, but her grip is surprisingly strong and she will not let me go.

‘Selaphiel is held in a place bound by bones,’ she tells me. ‘If
I
am any measure, he will have suffered even more terribly. I would do it, I would save him, but I am a husk. I am spent.
Free our brother
. Call it your debt to me. And if, in so doing, you are able to hurt Luc further, then all to the good. Thinking you almost within his grasp, vengeance has driven Luc to move against the Eight now, after all these years. Punish Luc in the same spirit. Avenge me. But also yourself.’

There’s a loud sneeze above us, a muffled curse, and Nuriel makes a startled movement, eyes wild again, as if she would draw a weapon, or take flight. I turn to see Bianca’s and Ryan’s shadowy outlines huddled high above us, on the stairs, listening intently.

Nuriel turns back to me. ‘
Free him
,’ she insists. ‘And if you see Michael, tell him I broke when I could not bend; that I could do no more, and I am sorry. It may yet turn out to be true …’

I and the mortal watchers on the stairs are buffeted by a blast wave of heat and energy as Nuriel grows brighter than the stars for an instant, before scattering into a billion pieces. And then she’s gone, like a vision, or a dream.

Ryan drops down onto the couch first, then Bianca lowers herself, cautiously, on my other side, her arms crossed tightly against her chest.

‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help … eavesdropping,’ she says. ‘Don’t blame Ryan — he tried to stop me, but I couldn’t stay away. You have no idea what you look like together, do you? You seem so powerful, so beautiful …’

‘And if I hadn’t sneezed,’ Ryan says, disgusted with himself, wrapping his arms around my frozen form and pulling me to him, ‘maybe I wouldn’t have scared her away like that. She probably had a lot more to tell you.’

‘She had to go,’ I murmur into his shoulder. ‘She needs to heal. And you probably overheard what she wants me to do. Go to Paris, kill more demons.’

I start to shake then.

Ryan tips my face up to his, saying gently, ‘I’m sorry I gave you a hard time when you came up out of the water. It’s hard for me to understand that other side of you, the, uh, freaky side. Whatever you did tonight, down there in the lake, it was justified. Seeing Nuriel that way reminded me so much of Lauren when you found her, of how helpless I felt. You’re not helpless.’

‘I’m a killer,’ I whisper, appalled.

‘A demon killer,’ Ryan clarifies, struggling to sound as if he’s entirely unfazed by the idea.

‘Which, by definition,’ Bianca interjects hesitantly, ‘is entirely acceptable.’

She draws her legs up onto the couch and sits cross-legged, facing us. She takes a deep breath before meeting my eyes. ‘Ryan’s already filled me in on a little of your … situation. You and he need to get to Paris, and I’ve got a way of getting you there quickly and discreetly. As stupid as it may sound to you, I want to help, if you’ll accept it.’

‘You’re not coming to Paris,’ I tell Ryan immediately, looking up into his face.

‘Am too,’ he retorts. ‘I
want
to see Paris. Thanks to you, I finally left home, left that little box I’d carved out for myself, and I don’t want to go back.’ He grins at me. ‘Plus, I’ve decided, after further thought, that I’m not completely unnecessary. My role is to provide cover for you.’

‘
Cover?
’ I can’t hide my incredulity and draw back from him, but he tightens his arms to halt my progress.

‘You’re fairly crap at acting human on a good day,’ he says, a gleam lighting his eyes. ‘Consider me your veneer of normality.’

‘I was supposed to get Nuriel out of here, then
leave
,’ I remind him quietly. ‘And you were supposed to run screaming from the freaky girl with the freaky powers at the first sign of trouble. That was the plan.’

‘Plans change,’ he murmurs. ‘Until I met you, I was the guy most likely to get a football scholarship and marry Brenda Sorensen. In that exact order.’

‘And Félix and I were supposed to be on our honeymoon in the Serengeti right about now, but here’s where the story ends,’ Bianca adds forlornly, looking down at her bare feet. ‘Which leads me right back to my point. I can have one of our jets fuelled and ready for take-off at daybreak. We have a private hangar. You’ll get into Le Bourget by mid-morning. It’s that easy. You just have to say the word.’ Her gaze flicks back to mine.

‘No one’s going to expect an archangel to travel by Gulfstream,’ Ryan says almost gleefully. ‘A Gulfstream with
two
coffee makers on board.’

‘Honestly, Ryan,’ Bianca says, half-appalled.

He grins. ‘You can always trust me to zero in on the important stuff. And yes,’ he continues, seeing the stony expression on my face, ‘you
are
being railroaded. We worked it all out.’

‘But I don’t
want
to go to Paris,’ I wail.

Bianca leans forward. ‘But you
have
to,’ she insists.

I turn my head and glare into her eyes so fiercely that she actually scrambles backwards across the couch, banging into the armrest at the end, her hands raised before her defensively.

Ryan pulls me more tightly into him, steadying me, his arms crossed about my waist. ‘Hear her out, please,’ he whispers into my hair.

Bianca sits straighter, tucking her legs back beneath her before shoving her heavy plait back over one shoulder. ‘I see certain … symmetries between us,’ she says falteringly. ‘We’ve both been utterly taken in, utterly betrayed, by the most toxic and despicable …’ She looks down, takes a shuddering, composing breath, before her startlingly blue eyes flick back up to mine, a bright sheen of tears in them. ‘People I have known, places I love that hold only the happiest memories for me … they’ve been swept away. They only exist now
in my head
.’

I realise from her unfocused gaze that she’s speaking of her old life with Félix, but also of her life here. She’s been twice bereaved, in such a short space of time.

‘I know that you understand what I’m talking about. And I don’t know what we did to deserve having our … our … worlds ripped apart,’ she says, her voice rising in anguish, ‘but you’re what I wish I could be. You have the power to
hurt
the person who did this to you. Don’t underestimate the healing qualities of simple vengeance, of retaliation, when you are absolutely in the right. God, what I wouldn’t give …’

She clenches her hands into fists upon her knees before something seems to recall her to our presence. Her voice is almost normal, almost calm, as she says, ‘The St Alban Group is primarily known these days as a financial services powerhouse. But centuries ago, we built our fortune upon shipping, and we still have a global logistics arm that even
Satan himself
could not rival. We move bullion, livestock, even weaponry, all around the globe daily, point to point. Getting a guy and his …’ her expression is nonplussed, ‘… freaky girlfriend into Paris would be child’s play.’

‘A freaky girlfriend with no papers,’ I remind them both with an edge to my voice, remembering the small, dark booklet amongst Ryan’s things. ‘The sovereignty I hail from doesn’t issue those.’

‘One passenger on the manifest,’ Bianca says brightly, refusing to be cowed by what I represent. ‘We get the cabin crew to turn a blind eye, or we minimise the number of crew, smuggle you on board somehow —’

‘We wouldn’t need to,’ Ryan interrupts softly. ‘Mercy can take care of getting herself on and off unseen.’

‘One passenger it is then.’

Bianca digs around in a pocket of her jeans and fishes out an embossed business card, holds it out to me with shaking fingers. I don’t take it, and her hand almost drops at the palpable hostility I’m giving off.

‘You act as if it’s already decided,’ I say menacingly. ‘Given my troubled history, I dislike feeling like I’m being
cornered
.’

‘I warned you about that,’ Ryan tells Bianca ruefully. ‘She doesn’t like being told what to do. The counsellor at Paradise High used to tell me I had issues with authority, but she …’ He gives me a little shake. ‘She’d have to be off the charts.’

Bianca’s voice is small as she continues holding the card out to me. ‘The choice is yours. But if I wanted to twist the knife into someone who deserved it, and a person offered me the means of getting from A to B to Z just on the strength of a phone call, I’d already be there, twisting the damned knife.’ Her voice drops further so that it’s barely audible. ‘When we’re young, they teach us about “turning the other cheek”, that vengeance isn’t a valid response. But this is
Lucifer
we’re talking about, Mercy. To save someone you love from him could never be wrong.’

I take the card, finally. It has the words
StA Global Logistics
embossed across the top and a logo featuring a galleon in full sail centred over a pair of crossed keys. There’s a single telephone number printed below, commencing with a plus symbol. The card offers no useful information to a casual reader.

‘That’s the family hotline,’ Bianca says. ‘Anyone wants to move a lover, a vintage car, a carton full of contraband for our own personal use, we call the wizards that man this number. I’m not saying I approve or disapprove, I’m just saying that’s how it goes. Borders are porous, and all borders can be worked — it’s almost a family motto. I’ll get you into Paris, and this is a free pass, if you need it, to get out of there again. You just say where and when, and it’ll happen like magic.’ She blinks rapidly and her eyes grow shiny again. ‘Just quote
Crespigny19A
when asked — the name of Félix’s favourite dog and our apartment number on the Upper East Side. Stupidly easy to crack, but I haven’t got around to changing it yet. Something that will shortly be rectified.’

I hand the card back to Bianca and she looks down at it, crushed. ‘So you won’t do it?’ she says in a small voice. ‘You won’t go?’

‘Merce?’ Ryan’s hold tightens as he looks into my eyes.

‘The dark place that Nuriel finds herself in now,’ I whisper, ‘Paris represents that place for me. The misery I felt then was
nothing
compared to the torment that Nuriel has endured, but I was at my … lowest there. I don’t think I will ever again be as alone, as lost, as
forsaken
, as I was in Paris.’

Bianca leans forward as if to touch me comfortingly, and I draw back into the solid warmth of Ryan’s body.

‘I don’t need your card,’ I say quietly, and her dark brows draw together unhappily. ‘I don’t need it,’ I go on, ‘because I’ve already memorised the number and the magic password. I won’t forget them, not now. You can keep it.’

Bianca sits upright, letting the card fall from her fingers. ‘So you’ll do it?’

I can see her immediately working out what she has to do, what she has to say, to make the magic happen.

I nod wearily within the circle of Ryan’s arms. ‘No other course would honour Selaphiel’s compassion for the monster that I was, nor Nuriel’s selflessness. They never deserved torture, and their bravery deserves mine. Those that guard Selaphiel were drawn to the darkness below, and in the darkness they must remain, or die — there are no innocents among them. Luc’s people have made a desert enough of this world. If I — who never had a task, never had a purpose — must be the one to slay the dragons that guard the gates of Hell in order to save Selaphiel, then so be it.’