Fury (21 page)

Ryan bends and kisses me, swiftly, then he and Selaphiel are gone, out of sight, and I hear his boots striking the first rungs.

And even though I told him to go, I can’t help feeling utterly bereft without him.

I turn back to see Jegudiel in the demon’s embrace. They could be lovers, they could be dancing — though Jegudiel’s profile is tight and hard, like granite — for she has her arms around his neck, and I see her lay her head against the side of his face, turning him giddily, laughing. She’s wreathed in a robe that is gleaming with light, but also tattered, crepuscular, like a moth-eaten shroud. As she turns again, with Jegudiel held fast in her arms, I see the mark of the exile shining across her shoulderblades, between her wings.

She’s facing me now, over his shoulder, and I’m shocked to see dark markings crawling across her face, her neck, her arms and hands, like tattoos rendered in acid, or poison. Her hair and form are alive with a dark electricity, a tainted light, that serves to make her cornflower blue eyes — the only part of her I truly recognise — seem unhinged and feral. She meets my eyes and grins, and I reel back in horror from her teeth — each one with the appearance of having been filed into a point, resembling the canines of wild animals.

I see recognition in her gaze as the ground below me ceases to shake and the sound of falling stone stops. The corridor is as silent as a grave now and she purrs into that silence, ‘Did you truly think that your passage through the underworld would go unnoticed …
Mercy
?’

So quickly I barely have time to register the movement, there’s a short, flaming blade in her hand and she pushes the tip of it into the smooth column of Jegudiel’s throat from the side. He cries out in agony. She keeps the blade there, deliberately holding its point inside him, inside his throat, and I see light leaching steadily out of the wound as he struggles to hold his head high, his bright hair flowing down his back, down between his wings, like a torrent of gold.

‘Let him go,’ I say quietly. ‘If you want me, if it’s true, as Luc has said, that I have always been the prize, then let him go.’

‘The way we let that eunuch Selaphiel go?’ She laughs. ‘We can always pick him and the boy up later, can’t we, Turael?’

A chill moves through me at her words and I turn to see a gleaming male figure standing before the rockfall at the other end of the passageway. He’s at least eight feet tall, the end feathers of his grey-tinted wings trailing in the dust on the floor, and there’s a burning scar on his chest as large as an archangel’s handprint. He has the dark eyes and dark hair that I dimly recall, but all else about him has changed, and changed utterly. He bears an intricate flowering of black markings around his left eye that only heightens his wild, male beauty.

Maybe he was standing there the whole time and saw the way Ryan and I looked at each other — the way everything we are to each other was in our eyes — because there’s an ugly expression on his beautiful face, a promise of pain.

‘Turael,’ I say evenly, trying not to betray my fear, ‘why on earth do you still affect to wear wings when all you and Neqael do these days is crawl in the earth like
worms
?’

He opens his mouth and hisses at me like a snake, and I see that his teeth are also sharp in appearance, like the canines of wild dogs.

‘Shall I bring you his head?’ he says, flexing his powerful hands. I go cold at his words. ‘Or would you rather not know the manner in which the boy dies?’

Neqael swings Jegudiel around to face me. I see the dark talons of one long-fingered hand stretched down across the front of Jegudiel’s torn robe like the claws of some predatory bird. She holds her short, flaming blade hard up against the front of his throat with her other hand.

‘It’s impressive,’ she says, ‘how ordinary and insignificant you’ve managed to make yourself. Even more ordinary and insignificant than you once were. It’s a mystery to us all what our Lord Lucifer saw in you. None of us could ever understand it. You had no more to commend you than any of us did.’

‘He saw her
fire
,’ Jegudiel snarls. ‘He saw her strength and her indomitable will. She is worth an
infinity
of you, and there will be a reckoning. It is coming.’

He inhales sharply as Neqael pushes the edge of her burning blade into his throat so that it bites deep.

‘Reminiscences bore me,’ she snaps. ‘Take her, Turael. Let us be celebrated, let us be raised up at last, for I am sick of playing gaoler, of being a keeper of bones and dead artefacts and dust. She shall restore our fortunes, and the order of all things will be remade in
our
image. It has been too long in the execution, our homecoming. Let her see for herself what Hell is like.’

I feel Turael moving closer behind me, feel the dark shirring of his energy, am nauseated by it.

‘I will hold them off for as long as I can,’ Jegudiel says, regret in his dark eyes as he looks at me.

‘That won’t be necessary, my friend,’ I murmur, as Turael’s weapon springs into his hand at my back. I hear the sizzle of the blade as it pulses with that tainted light and heat peculiar to the fallen. ‘Just remember to duck.’

A fleeting look of puzzlement crosses Jegudiel’s face as I slowly pivot so that I’m side-on to Neqael, to Turael. I take a small step back so that I have a perfect line of sight in both directions.

‘You know what?’ I say conversationally. ‘You’re antiques, you two. You’re stupid. And you know why you’re stupid?’

Neqael’s laugh is discordant and derisive. ‘This coming from
you
, who could not resist showing off your “cleverness” to Jegudiel, to Selaphiel. Turael
saw
you. You’re as dimwitted as the humans you consort with these days.’

I continue softly, as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘You’re so consumed by malice, so focused on universal domination, that you’ve completely missed the point. You bring out the very worst in humankind, but you don’t
see
them, you don’t comprehend what they’ve done, what they’re capable of.’

‘Oh, I see well enough.’ Neqael laughs, exposing the sinuous line of her throat that is wreathed with dark markings. ‘They possess a fine capability for depravity of every nature, but beyond that, they are animals. And now you consort with animals — and therefore you are their whore, the way you were once Lucifer’s whore,
H
—’

I see her tattooed mouth begin to form the first syllable of my name, I feel Turael grasp me by my long, curling hair, lifting me off the ground easily, and I have no choice. They leave me no choice, and I’m almost glad as pain begins to explode in me.

I let Turael swing me towards him, and I turn my face as if I would place one last kiss upon his cheek. Then, like a reflex, like the speed of thought, there’s a gun in each of my hands: sleek and heavy, with the look of the semi-automatic, a single lick of blue flame passing across the surface. They require no strength, no
finesse
to wield, just proximity and dumb luck.

I feel the muzzle of the gun in my blazing left hand connect with Turael’s jaw as the gun in my right rises towards Neqael as my eyes meet hers. My wrists are crossed before me, and it happens so fast that I’ve already pulled the trigger of each weapon simultaneously in the time it takes for Neqael’s eyes to widen in recognition of the things I hold in my hands.

Her mouth falls open and I see her thinking:
But guns are stupid things; human things that humans use upon each other. They have no bearing upon angels, or upon demons
.

Until now, until
me
.

It’s just a single shot from each weapon — small and insignificant against the majestic, blazing blades of my enemies — but the bullets are as deadly as any cutting surface, sped by thought, infallibly accurate, because I am the scope, I am the accelerant.

Just a small sting, like the bite of a mosquito.

But I imagine I see Jegudiel wrenching himself to the right as the blast wave of heat and dark energy that once was Turael knocks me to the tunnel floor. I’m deaf and blind to everything, my entire being resounding with pain as if my body were a tolling bell. So I don’t see the second bullet connect, I don’t see Neqael die. But I feel it. I feel the atmosphere compress then expand almost beyond bearing as the passageway is filled with the roar of her dark matter returning to God.

Then Jegudiel and I are all that remains in this silent, tomblike place.

I crawl across the cold and filthy floor towards him and say into the still place inside his head:
Brother, you’re hurt
.

Jegudiel sits up slowly against the wall and his damaged wings shred into nothingness. He just looks at me with his dark eyes. I kneel before him, almost in an attitude of worship, dwarfed by his scale.

Raphael kept insisting you’d changed
. His voice in my mind is very quiet.
And I confess, I did not believe it possible
.

Raphael is missing
, I reply.
He was not in Milan. He has been taken, too. But not here. Taken somewhere else
.

Jegudiel seems to slump at the news. Then he gestures in the air, making the fingers of his hands into unfamiliar weapons, into guns.
How …?

The smile I give him is sad.
When you have lived long enough in this world, you will understand how I am able to manifest something so utterly foreign to everything we are
.

I reach out to him, and as my small fingers connect with his, he takes both my hands gently.

‘You do me good,’ he murmurs aloud. ‘To have you restored in this way — it gladdens me beyond measure.’

‘My memory is still riddled with holes,’ I mutter, ‘like this place. I’m not complete, not the creature I was. I may never be whole again.’

‘You don’t need those memories,’ he replies firmly. ‘You no longer have them — whether by your own doing or Raph’s — for good reason.’

His gaze grows distant. ‘Selaphiel can’t remain here — you know that, don’t you? This world will only kill him. I need you to do something for me …’

It’s probably something impossible, but I say anyway, without hesitation, ‘Yes, of course. Name it.’

Jegudiel refocuses his gaze upon my face, and his smile, now, seems sad. ‘Do you know how he does it?’

I shake my head, knowing that he speaks of Luc. ‘Fault lines and surface weaknesses: those are what he uses to move himself and his forces around the human world unseen. He’s had years to work out where the pressure points are; he’s also more than adept at creating new ones.’

Jegudiel shifts uncomfortably against the rough stone at his back and I know he’s wounded inside, too. Perhaps badly.

‘Go on,’ I say softly.

‘We Eight also have our meeting places, our secret haunts. Michael will not thank me for telling you this, but the Majlis al-Djinn is one such place; also the crypts of ancient Carthage, the peak of Mount Pilatus, the limestone terraces of Pamukkale, and many others. After Milan …’ his gaze shifts inward again, ‘… we were to regroup at a place mortals know as SMfu-iwa or Lot’s Wife. Do you know it?’

I shake my head. ‘Where is it?’

‘It’s part of a chain of isles, the Izu-shotM,’ he murmurs, sitting straighter against the wall. ‘Hundreds of miles south of the city known as Tokyo, Japan.’ He gives me a wry, sideways glance. ‘You’ve seen that city … in another life. SMfu-iwa is the southernmost of them all. An isle so sheer and uninhabitable, and located in such rough seas, that it is virtually impossible for any human to disembark there. Perfect for our purposes. Whoever survived Milan was to go there immediately and wait. And plan.’

He grasps my hands tighter in his, and his face is grave. ‘I need you to tell whoever you find there what transpired here: that I am alive; that Selaphiel yet lives and has been taken out of Luc’s reach. Can you do that for me?’

No small thing. But those who have risked their lives for me cannot be denied; and I know now where this compulsion, this need to repay, to make things right, springs from. It has gone beyond simple vengeance, beyond redemption. I’m beginning to see that maybe only love and fealty have the power to move me now. The demon killing that I must engage in sickens me. I do not delight in revenge the way that I thought I would. But I would do it again, and again, in a heartbeat, for the right reasons.

I nod, finally.

Jegudiel stands slowly, pulling me to my feet before releasing my hands. ‘Go as quickly as you can, by whatever means will take you and your …’ He stops momentarily, perplexed. ‘Your mortal companion to SMfu-iwa.’

‘He hates flying, you know,’ I say. ‘My way, not the human way. For so long I couldn’t fly; and when I finally regained my freedom, I almost couldn’t make myself do it again. But now, when I
can
fly, there’s Ryan to consider …’

Jegudiel looks down into the human face I wear and smiles. It makes him almost too beautiful to gaze on. ‘He must be very strong, to love you,’ he says quietly. ‘He’ll survive.’

His outline begins to shred as I follow him back down the tunnel towards the crack in the wall that conceals that ladder to the surface.

‘Selaphiel is my concern now,’ he murmurs, almost to himself. ‘Mine alone.’ He looks at me over his shoulder and I know I will always remember this moment — the instant he was before me and then gone, vanishing into motes of light, his laughter resounding, ghostly, his voice saying out of the ether, ‘As to the mortal boy who loves you? I leave it to you to explain to him where you are going and why. You were always … inventive.’

Then I know that he has vanished into the cleft in the rock and I — so weary in spirit, wanting nothing more than to be, and to be with Ryan — have no choice but to follow.

I hear Ryan yell out as the gust of force that Jegudiel is hooks Selaphiel off the rungs of the ladder below him. And I seem to hear Jegudiel’s voice echo with faint laughter within this narrow vent in the earth:
Persistence, Ryan. Courage. For you shall need it!

Then they are gone like a hurricane, my brothers, gone like smoke. Up and out through the manhole cover, which clatters away, leaving a tiny patch of early evening sky framed far above our heads. And I’m suddenly there in Selaphiel’s place, on the ladder, a few rungs below where Ryan is, and it’s pitch black because I’m just a girl in a black puffer jacket and dark grey jeans who gives out no light. But I can see that Ryan and Selaphiel haven’t even reached halfway. There’s still a hundred feet, more, to go.

Ryan’s voice is strained. ‘Tell me it’s you, and not some demon that just happened to wander in here smelling like fresh snowfall and moving as silently as a cat.’

He’s trying to keep his tone light, but I can hear the exhaustion; that he’s about to give way.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say quietly. ‘About all of this. I warned you. And it’s only going to get worse.’

‘Just get us out of here,’ he says finally. ‘You can give me the bad news when we’re standing on solid ground with a December gale blowing in our faces.’

‘You’re sure?’

I hear him swallow. ‘It’s who you are. And holding you back, not letting you do all that freaky shit you can do, it just puts you at risk. It’s time for this ladybug to
man up
.’ His voice is suddenly wry in the darkness.

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ I say softly.

I don’t give him any more time to think about it; I collapse into vapour, coil myself around my beloved and haul us up and out through the open manhole. It’s over in seconds.

The instant I materialise in my human form beside Ryan, who’s breathing hard, like he’s just run a marathon, I fall to my knees, my head ringing with the feel of Luc reaching for me across some unfathomable distance.

Underground, the solid rock had sheltered me from his questing consciousness, but out here it’s like he’s coming at me from all sides, like the wind itself is roaring in his voice:
There’s nowhere to hide now, nowhere. When I find you, I will tear you apart for what you have done to me!

It’s as if a breach is opening in the air between Luc and me, as if the shutter of a camera, or a great eye, is turning its gaze upon me, upon Ryan. I know I can’t let Luc see us here; am terrified that he might read my thoughts straight out of my head as I think them. Dimly, I feel Ryan’s hands on my shoulders, hear him call my name fearfully, and I know he’s never been in so much danger.

‘
Not unless I find you first!
’ I howl in reply, almost blind and deaf with pain.

The force of my fury — born of so much hurt and betrayal; a keen, animal rage — is like the lash of a whip, an open flame, upon Luc’s own psyche. I hear him shriek in surprise, in real agony, before that sense of questing is suddenly cut off, and the night no longer seems alive with his malice.

He’ll hesitate before he reaches out again, though it has cost me dearly. I roll over, moaning, hugging myself protectively, every part of me raw in the evening air.

Second by second, my senses grow less jammed, begin to return, and I realise that it smells of wet earth out here. It must have rained while we were below. But the air isn’t filled with returning birdsong, or the sound of tyres swishing on rain-slicked streets, but with sirens and the reflected glow of flashing lights.

Ryan raises me to my feet, and, without thinking, I pull him to me, needing his warmth, his strength, just to stay upright. I take in my surroundings shakily and see with shock that it’s as if we came up out of the ground not in Paris, but back in Milan. All around us is a scene of utter devastation. We’re standing on the only section of the street that hasn’t collapsed into the earth, taking with it cars, bicycles, trees, street furniture, road signs, the awnings and porticos of buildings. It’s not a
Rue
now, but a deep trench.

‘My God,’ Ryan breathes as he slowly processes the desolation around us. ‘What the hell happened up here?’

‘
We
happened,’ I say quietly.

He turns and stares at me, horrified.

The last of the day’s light has leached out of the navy blue sky. My internal clock tells me that it’s after four in the afternoon; that we’ve been gone for hours. There are no faces at the windows of the damaged buildings looming over us, but plenty of emergency personnel on the ground, and a large crowd being kept back at some far remove. I hear someone shout out as they catch sight of us standing in the middle of the road like sightseers. Except that Ryan’s covered, head to foot, in white dust, just like those kids were. We might as well have a flashing neon sign over our heads that says we’ve been down in the catacombs while the world caved in above us.

‘
Arrêtez-vous!
’ a man roars in the distance.

I don’t give him time to point a weapon at us or get any closer; I just grasp Ryan under the arms and leap into the sheltering sky, with Ryan bellowing out his fear.

I take us so high, so fast, that we are soon lost in the underbelly of black cloud that is advancing towards us. Soon, we are specks too small for the human eye to detect. They will have no explanation for us in whatever reports they file of this day.

The direction of the gusting wind is against us. Ryan’s stopped yelling, but his eyes are screwed shut and there’s a sick look on his face as if this is some crazy carnival ride he can’t get off. Once my trajectory starts to even out, he wriggles in my grasp, actually struggling to reach around and get the backpack, half out of his mind with fear.

‘We could just c-call Henri,’ he stammers through chattering teeth. ‘Catch a lift with him.’

It’s arctic up here and I hug him closer to me. ‘Henri’s officially off-duty,’ I reply gently. ‘And do you really think he’ll want to pick up after he sees what’s happened to the fourteenth arrondissement? If you can bear it, look down.’

Ryan shakes his head, terrified.

‘Street after street, Ryan, collapsed into the earth. If I were Henri, I wouldn’t touch us, and I don’t blame him. He won’t pick up. Please, don’t struggle any more. Remember what you told me?
You’re not going to fall
. I’ve got you, I’ve got you.’

Ryan’s breathing erratically and his eyes are still closed, so he doesn’t see us leave the chaos around the Île de la Cité and Île St Louis in our wake, doesn’t see that we’ve already left northern Paris far behind us.

To spare him a little, I’m holding back on how fast I can actually go. I feel no fear now as I stretch into the buffeting wind, into the smell of advancing rain. When Ryan is with me, it truly is as if I cannot fall.

The lights are so extraordinarily beautiful, like a net of jewels flung across the darkened land. I feel a surge of inexplicable joy, though I don’t think we’ve ever been so exposed, just two tiny creatures battling a vast and threatening sky.

‘I wish you’d look!’ I tell him.

He rests his cold cheek against mine, his eyes still closed. ‘Just tell me when it’s over,’ he says, teeth chattering, his whole body one long tremor.

Ten minutes later, no more than that, it is.

‘We’re here,’ I tell him, landing so silently, so lightly, that it takes him a moment to comprehend that solid ground is again beneath our feet. He staggers a little where he stands, opening his eyes with difficulty before raising his head. I see the look of shock on his face as he focuses on the signage on the hangar wall beside us:
StA Global Logistics
. Fear had blocked out the sound of aircraft taxiing down the runway beneath us, blocked out the odour of burning aviation fuel and wet tarmac.

‘You’re going to walk in the front entrance of that hangar,’ I tell him in a low voice, ‘and introduce yourself to the ground staff on duty and tell them you need the jet fuelled and ready for take-off as fast as humanly possible,
faster
. We’re calling in that favour — get Bianca on the line if you have to, or those mystery telephone wizards. Throw everything you’ve got at them.’

‘But I look like a
terrorist
,’ Ryan says, appalled, running a grazed and trembling hand through his dusty buzz cut. ‘Those police on the ground — that’s what they thought we were. And where am I to say we’re going in such a hurry?’

‘Tokyo,’ I reply. ‘By way of the Izu Islands. Specifically, the jet has to make one pass over the uninhabited crag known as Lot’s Wife — the SMfu-iwa.’

Ryan mouths the unfamiliar words, imprinting them on his memory.

‘I’ll explain more when we get on board,’ I add. ‘Minimum crew, you know the drill.’

My outline is already beginning to shred at the edges as Ryan squares his shoulders and stumbles around the front of the building.

When the plane reaches cruising altitude — after passing through a belt of heavy rain that gave us a rocky time — Ryan unbuckles his seatbelt and heads for the couch at the back of the plane. ‘Scooch over,’ he mock-complains when he finds me already there, with a couple of fat pillows under my head and two more set out for him beside me.

There’s a pretty, softly spoken crew member at the front of the plane near the cockpit, her hands clenched unhappily in her lap. Apart from welcoming Ryan on board, she’s tried to avoid him at all costs. I can feel her towering tension from where I am, and it’s rising in me, too. I’ve had time to think, which is always a dangerous thing.

Ryan’s clearly made the most of the passenger lounge inside the hangar during the fifty-seven minutes it took to scramble together a crew and a flight out of Le Bourget: somehow he’s managed to shower and get the worst of the dust off his tee-shirt. He smells like soap and the supermarket-brand deodorant Tommy put inside our backpack. He eases himself down beside me, his mobile phone in his hand, and his eyes seem very tired.

‘What’s at SMfu-iwa?’ he yawns, angling in to face me.

I reach up to trace his freshly shaven jaw, the bruised-looking skin beneath his eyes. He closes them briefly, before placing his hand on mine and pulling our entwined fingers down to rest between us on the couch.

‘More like
who
,’ I whisper. ‘The Eight were supposed to regroup there after Milan. It could be some of Them, or no one. I just need to tell them Jegudiel and Selaphiel are alive; and then maybe that’s my cue to stop messing you around and get the hell out of your life. For good.’

Ryan draws breath sharply. ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ I say, frowning at the broad wall of his chest, unable to meet his eyes, astonished at my cowardice. ‘Every moment I’m here is another chance for Luc to get to me and trigger the kind of “end time” he’s been craving since he fell. They all
knew
me, Ryan, those demons that I … killed. We had … history. We used to be on the same side. Only at the time I hadn’t realised sides were forming.’ I raise my eyes to his face. ‘They all knew my name. They would have used it, too.’

‘So what?’ he says sharply. ‘So what if they knew your name?’

‘I don’t just suffer from an inconvenient kind of amnesia,’ I say softly. ‘Raphael did something to me — he hid my name so deep inside me that I can’t bear to hear it without going haywire. Any one of the original hundred that fell with Luc could just speak my name and I’d be his again; it would be that simple. Luc would break free of this realm, the holy war would begin, and the universe would become the kind of contested territory this earth has been, for thousands of years. If I stay, everything gets placed in the balance.’

‘I make the mistake of leaving you alone just to take a stupid shower and you come up with
all this
?’ Ryan says angrily. ‘Haven’t you sacrificed enough? Can’t the Eight take over for you now? Whatever happened to you and me losing ourselves in the world? When do
you
get to do what you want for a change? Or me?’ I hear his bitterness. ‘Or maybe you’re trying to let me down gently, and I’m not hearing you. All the signals you’ve been giving out — have I misread those, too?’

‘I owe Them my life, Ryan,’ I say pleadingly. ‘And if I’m not around, the Eight will be able to contain Luc the way he’s always been contained — until now. When he didn’t know where I was, he was … constrained. He’ll be constrained again, thwarted again, if I’m not here to fuel his ambitions. In the end, I can’t take you with me,’ I add with a catch in my voice. ‘And I can’t stay. I can’t see any way around it.’

Ryan’s eyes are so dark with pain they’re almost black.

‘But I told my family about you,’ he says, pushing a button at the base of his phone so the screen flares into life. I see a cascade of small electronic squares in bright colours with cartoon logos.

‘I finally did it. They asked when I was coming home, and I said I couldn’t be sure, that it would depend on what you were doing, because I was with you. They wanted to know how “some girl” could be so important that I’d fly all the way to Australia, then turn around and fly to Milan and Paris and Tokyo, then God knows where else, wasting all this time and effort and money when I should be focusing on college. So I had to tell them
why
. Why you’re so important to me that I’d drop everything again in a second just to be with you; how we all owe you a debt we’ll never be able to repay. At first, they didn’t believe me — they said I’d been brainwashed, kidnapped by some dangerous cult — until Lauren explained.