Muse (6 page)

Angelo’s waiting impatiently for Vladimir to get into the first limo, but the older man continues to watch me narrowly. There’s impatience in his voice when he suddenly bellows, ‘
Býstro
, Irina!
Býstro!
’
Hurry
, he’s saying.
Hurry.
But there’s still that reluctance in me to re-enter Irina’s heavily regimented existence.

And something’s telling me to look around. It’s like an itch, like a small and nagging cut dragging at my attention. Something; but nothing I can really place.

The entire length of Via Victor Hugo is weirdly deserted. The old buildings lining both sides of the street have taken on a cold and sinister cast. They seem to loom inwards in the failing light, as if we have stepped into a painting by Dali, or Magritte.

I see that while I was talking to Gia, a cumulonimbus cloud of terrifying proportions has
filled the sky immediately above us. Its ragged, billowing shape seems as wide as it is tall, and it’s outlined in a strange and brilliant corona, as if it has swallowed the sun. There’s distant lightning flickering at its heart that maybe only I can see. The strange mass seems to frame the graceful triangular Palladian roofline of the three-storey grey stone building across the road in a brilliant, numinous light. The extraordinary cloud formation is so beautiful that I can hardly look away. It seems almost familiar, like a portal to another world.

‘Irina!’ Vladimir shouts, but his voice seems remote and inconsequential, as if heard in a dream.

I can almost smell the approaching storm. There’s heavy rain on the way, a massive front that will hit the old city like a bomb, and I know with certainty that it will last for hours and obscure everything in its path. That cloud, it’s just the beginning of something terrible. A storm for the ages. They’ll talk about it for years to come.

I rip my eyes away from the sky and take a small grudging step towards Vladimir. But then I see something. A gleaming blur moving in an illogical fashion. Like a mobile patch of sunlight. Light where there shouldn’t be any light. I turn my head towards
it, though when I try to follow it with my eyes, I don’t see it any more. Perhaps the surface gleam of slickly shining paving stones, or the electric light spilling out of the interiors of cafés and storefronts, is playing tricks on my senses.

Or maybe
, remarks my inner demon,
it does not wish to be seen. Not this time
.

I frown.

Appare!
I think.
Show yourself
.

And that’s when I feel it, faint but insistent. Like an energy at once hot and cold, hair-raising, like a hum, like vinegar in my bones. I know that feeling, have felt it before. Know its source. And it’s coming closer.

I scan my surroundings intently, see nothing. Though I can still feel it, almost hear the grating
zing
,
zing
of its movements. It’s far weaker, far fainter, than when I first encountered it on a city street in Australia a lifetime ago. It’s the same entity, I’m sure of it. And the
malakh
is following me, for some reason only it knows.

Quid est nomen tuum?
I think.
Tell me your name.

‘Irina!’ Vladimir repeats. He steps forward and places one hand under my elbow, ushering me insistently towards the open car door so that I have
no choice but to follow, though I continue searching the air, the sky, for that familiar, errant gleam.

Inside the car, Felipe’s mouth is smiling as he beckons me forward, but his eyes are cold with annoyance. ‘
Senorita
,’ he calls, leaning through the gap between the front seats with his smiling mouth and cold eyes. ‘
Por favor, Senorita.
’

The icy wind tears at my hair, at my clothes, as if insisting that I stay. And I
want
to stay outside on this steel-grey thoroughfare, under this steel-grey sky, with the temperature falling fast towards freezing. The cold has never bothered me. But I don’t see how I can, because there’s no freedom for Irina from these people who’ve been instructed never to let her out of their sight. I feel a stab of pity for her — even though she’s a bitch-slapping mess-in-a-dress. What else can you expect if you cage a wild animal?

Vladimir applies subtle pressure to the bones and nerves of my elbow. I’m leaning forward, placing one foot on the running board of the limo when I catch a glimpse of something else. It’s up on that roof across the way, the one outlined in glory. And though it feels as if Vladimir is crushing the bones of my arm to pieces, I dig in my impossible heels, and lift my head to look at it.

The moment I do, the faint, achy sensation — that hum I can feel way down in my bones — it all abruptly ceases. And time itself, the flesh-rending wind, the whole world around me — they all stand still. Because it’s not a light I’m seeing, up on that roof. Not a transient gleam. It’s a man’s shape. Broad-shouldered, long-limbed, perfectly proportioned, like something out of a classical painting, a living statue. He’s appeared so silently it’s as if he stepped out of that radiant cloud. There’s a corona all around him.

Even from where I’m standing, way down on the ground, I see that he has tawny, wide-set eyes — like the eyes of a young lion — and olive skin, long, dark gold hair. He’s wearing ordinary-looking street clothes: a long-sleeved grey and white plaid shirt over a white tee-shirt and blue jeans; a pair of battered, dark red Converse on his feet. There’s even a black satchel on his broad back, a beaten-up leather belt around his waist. But I know they’re all fake. Just props. He may look like a pitch-perfect human being in his late teens or early twenties, but he’s not human.

This guy in the ordinary clothes is standing on the stone pinnacle of a roof that’s about sixty feet off the ground. And he’s more beautiful than anything in creation has a right to be. He’s bound by light.
It seems to come off his skin in shimmering waves of pure energy, as if he’s made of it. The gathering darkness can’t hide what he is.

He’s an archangel.

Te gnovi
, I address the being upon the roof silently, as the
malakh
had once addressed me.
I know you.

And I do. Forgotten all these years, but recalled in the beholding, as if scales have suddenly fallen from my eyes. He’s one of the archangels who rally to Michael’s bright presence. A lieutenant, if you like, loyal unto death. He’d stood with that shining multitude arrayed against me, against Luc, all those years ago, for reasons I can no longer remember, but want so badly to recall.

K’el.
As I remember his name, something seems to ignite in me. The two worlds — one ‘real’ yet fallible, one unseen and infallible — converge once again in a single, watchful figure upon a distant roofline. Seeing
him causes me an almost physical pain. I feel a wave of longing so intense that it’s like a kind of sickness. For
home
.

Where the great universe wheels and turns, and turns about. Where planets, stars, suns, moons, the greater and lesser bodies, fly by; comets, black holes, supernovae, strange fissures in time and space, twist and curl overhead like a painted, yet living, ever-changing dome.

I should be wary, I should be angry. K’el is in some way implicated in this, my banishment. But there’s something like giddiness, like glee, in my expression as I say his name again. I savour the sound, the feel and weight, of the word. It is an indictment of my peculiar … condition that I could have forgotten someone I once knew so well.

But there’s no answering joy in his face as he steps off the roof — sixty feet, at least, above the surface of the earth — and drifts weightlessly towards the ground, until he is standing across the street from me, disdain in his golden eyes.

You are betrayed
, he says directly into my mind. And his voice is as chill and unwelcoming as the arctic wind that plagued Via Victor Hugo only moments ago.
He comes for you and you must cleave to us,
cleave to the Eight, else evil be given free reign and the war begin in earnest.

I step away from Irina’s limousine, away from the frozen figures of Vladimir and Angelo poised on the street like life-sized, plastic action figures, away from Felipe’s motionless form, still twisted towards me inside the vehicle, anger touching his aquiline features. Away, for a moment, from the trappings of Irina’s cosseted life.

I cross the street towards K’el, arms outstretched, as if I, too, am floating. Or sleepwalking.

I wonder whether he will let me touch him. The need to place my hands upon one who is my kin, my brethren, one who knew me
as I was
, who recognises me inside this stranger’s body, is so physical that I’m shaking with it.

I step up from the street’s irregular surface onto the footpath and it’s as if I hit an unseen wall of force. It’s immovable. When I push forward, seeking to pierce that seamless web of energy that surrounds him, there’s a crackle of intense blue-white light at the point where I make contact with his invisible armour, his deliberate shell. For an instant, there’s the sensation that I’m touching eternity, absolute power. And I must step back, or else Irina’s tender human skin will begin to
burn
.

I can go no further — he will let me get no closer — and the surge of disappointment I feel is like a spurt of acid in my heart.

We look upon each other, one foot of space all that separates us. It may as well be the width of a galaxy. He will not let me touch him, though his eyes seem strangely intent, almost hungry, as he looks upon my face.

‘No time for sentimentality,
Mercy
.’ His voice is acid, belying the luminosity of his gaze. ‘The universe no longer revolves around your wants or desires. Luc will soon be here. Despite all our best-laid plans — plans involving more time and more of us than a single being should ever warrant — he’s found you. Or one of his spies has. And now he hastens here to claim you. But we will not let it happen.’

Luc knows where I am? He’s coming
here
?

I stumble, almost fall, at the implication.

Immediately, the force-field that K’el has placed between us vanishes and he grips my wrist with his cool, steadying fingers. The gesture is telling: in some way, he must still remember me the way I was, he must still care.

I look down at his glowing hand upon Irina’s skin. And it’s like marble or alabaster, without flaw, smooth
as fired glass or porcelain. Unlined on any surface. Uncorrupted and incorruptible. Though he’s touching me, I get no sense of what’s in his mind because his guard is up. He does not wish me to know.

As tall as Irina is, K’el is taller, constructed like a figure out of myth, looming over me, almost blocking out what remains of the weird half-light. I feel dwarfed and strangely frail in his glowing presence where once we were … equals.

And I cry, ‘Not one of you — not Uriel, not Gabriel, not even Luc — has ever told me
why
. Why can’t I be “claimed”? Why can’t I go home, when it’s what I want more than anything in this world? What has this elaborate plan — involving so much time, so many of “us” — all been for?
I don’t understand
, K’el. I don’t understand what came between us all to cause this rift. Weren’t we
friends
once, you and I?’

K’el gazes at me with his liquid gold, burning eyes, and I see something at war within him. He
wants
to tell me; but something — some stricture, some pronouncement, some fatal consequence — prevents him. And he’s struggling with it.

But my bewilderment, my absolute sorrow, is genuine, and his gaze softens, though his hand upon me remains like iron. ‘Once friends, yes, though in
time I almost came to … hate you and was glad when you … left us.’

I frown at his words, the things left unsaid in the pauses, and he adds softly, ‘I see that you don’t understand, don’t even remember that day. Nothing’s ever been the same, for any of us, since then, did you know that?’ He leans forward and smooths a strand of long hair out of my eyes, so gently that I barely feel his touch. ‘It’s better this way. There’s nothing in that memory for you but grief, and it’s best if …’

His voice falters, and I see that he’s trying to say the right thing, choose the right words, the less hurtful words.

‘It’s better this way,’ he repeats more firmly, gripping my narrow shoulders. ‘You don’t want to remember what happened. It would only destroy you all over again.’

I find myself trembling, and K’el’s fingers tighten on me as if he’d like to pull me close. ‘Luc’s no good for you, he’s never been good enough,’ he murmurs, looking down into my upturned face with his glorious eyes.

I close mine, thinking he will wrap his arms around me at last. But then he gives a small, hard laugh and lets go of me, almost pushing me away.

‘And that’s got to be the understatement of all time,’ he snarls. ‘But you’ve always had this ability to … unsettle me and I see that you haven’t lost that power. I came here to warn you. That’s what I’m here for.’ His tone is self-mocking.

Feeling strangely bereft, I wail, ‘But I still don’t understand what I did wrong! Why was I cast out?’

K’el’s beautiful mouth twists a little and he paces away, as if standing too close to me might be dangerous. ‘You did nothing but fall in love with the wrong one,’ he says, suddenly refusing to meet my eyes. ‘You picked Luc when you should have picked … Raphael. Well, that’s the accepted wisdom, anyway.’ His voice is bitter.

I recoil at his words. ‘That’s it? For something so simple I was …
banished?
’

He hesitates. I can see him struggling for the right words, the right way to frame an explanation I’ve waited aeons to hear.

‘You were guilty of being young and overly … malleable,’ he says finally. ‘You let passion be your guiding principle. You let Luc twist you, let him change your character from everything that was light — all the bright, good things that were in you from the moment you were first created — to a creature
motivated by cruelty, perversity, vanity, the principles of pleasure without thought or care of repercussion. Together, you and Luc were a divisive force, and so destructive. More devastating even than life forms like these.’ He gestures at my human face, my human shape, dismissively. ‘Raphael would have been a more fitting companion for someone as high-spirited, as strong-willed, curious and questioning, as you were,’ he says, his eyes never leaving mine for a moment. ‘He would have strengthened you in beauty, in wisdom, in compassion, in every way that matters. Any one of us would have been a better match for you than Luc. Even me.’ His mouth twists again.

I feel my face flush with angry blood. As if
alone
I was nothing. I was only something when I was someone’s companion, someone’s consort.

‘The heart will have only what it wants,’ I spit. ‘And so I was judged and cast out because I was young and foolish? Because I chose the
wrong one
?’

My voice flies up the scale, breaking on the words, and K’el’s eyes darken with something like disgust.

‘
Not for us
, that “lifelong partnership” that’s said to unite mortal woman and mortal man in heart, in mind, in body. We are
elohim
, Mercy. We were created first among angels; first among all things that were
created. Some of us were sworn to protect the holy throne; some to govern the order of the universe and all life within its boundaries; some to bear witness, to keep history, to mark the passage of time; some to fill the skies with glory, to sing praise even when there seems little reason to do so. Everything in its place, or else it is chaos. It is our creed.’

For a single, disorientating moment I’m Lela Neill again, hearing Sulaiman/Gabriel telling me the same thing, and I feel the same fury.
Know your place.
What kind of stupid creed is that?

K’el’s voice is low, almost menacing. ‘We were created to maintain control, not surrender it. You were so far out of line that you threatened us all.’

‘Ah yes, the “line”,’ I say bitterly, staring at my feet with strangely stinging eyes.

I’m feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, as if I’ve been admonished in just this way before. By K’el, by others.

‘You’re all the same,’ I snap. ‘And you wonder why I chose Luc over any of you?’

K’el moves closer almost reluctantly, tilting my chin up to draw my gaze back to him, his eyes curiously intent. ‘We’re not supposed to love just
one
other, to the exclusion of everything else — duty,
fellowship, faith, principle. We
are
love — for each other, for all things. An impartial love, it’s true; we can’t hope to do anything more than maintain a rough equilibrium.’ His eyes flash and there’s something like loathing again in his expression.

‘You changed everything,’ he says accusingly. ‘When you saw Luc for the first time, things were never the same again.’

‘And yet everything changes, everything evolves,’ I argue hopelessly. ‘Why should
we
remain forever rigid and unchanging when even the universe itself does not? Nowhere is it written that it’s a crime for one such as I was to fall in love!’

‘Yet we were created to be eternal and perfect and changeless.’ K’el’s voice is bitter. ‘You never would have looked at me, at any of us, the way you looked at
him
. You were
obsessed
. As he was with you.’

I close my eyes briefly, feeling Irina’s face flame in memory of the way we were together, Luc and I. Like two suns colliding. Who wouldn’t want a love like that? Who couldn’t survive on the embers of such a love, for centuries, if one had to?

So they’d all thought Luc was wrong for me, that together we were a colossal, destructive mistake. And no one had ever told me. They’d just arranged for
me to be summarily removed from everything I’d ever known, because I’d become inconvenient and embarrassing, not quite up to par.

‘So I was exiled by committee, with no recourse to anyone? Given no avenue of appeal? I had no chance to defend myself before you cast me out!’ I cry.

K’el’s gaze is troubled as he replies slowly, ‘That’s not the way it happened; don’t go putting words into my mouth. What’s happened to you — the way we have been forced to keep you hidden — was born of necessity. It was the best we could do, given the circumstances — can’t you understand that?’ There’s another odd pause. ‘Luc knew of our disquiet. And he chose not to tell you. Instead, he isolated you, kept you away from us deliberately. What does that say about him?’

For a second, I’m pierced by a vision of Luc and me entwined in each other’s arms within a living bower of flowers, the air heavy with the fragrance of a thousand different blooms that no human hand could possibly have put together. It was our place, our world, the hanging garden he created for me alone. Dust now, ashes.

‘It wouldn’t have changed anything,’ I answer in grief, in defiance. ‘I wouldn’t have given up a second I
spent by Luc’s side. He’s what’s sustained me, all this time, in the wilderness that is this earth. My only true friend, my constant companion.’

K’el’s lip curls as he crushes my upper arms so tightly in his hands that I gasp out loud.

‘Then, foolish creature,’ he roars, and his voice has a steely, ringing edge to it, ‘you do not need an explanation for this eternity of drifting — in which you claim you’ve had
no
friends,
no
sustenance, no support of any kind. In making your choice, you damned yourself to countless lifetimes of human misery. Your fault, all of it. Free will — that thing you hold in such sacred regard — always comes at a price.’

He raises his right hand, glaring at me with his preternatural lion eyes, and I’m suddenly very afraid, remembering that our kind may only kill and be killed by each other.

As if he’s reading my thoughts, K’el gives a bitter laugh and rakes his tawny hair with his gleaming upraised hand before letting it fall harmlessly to his side.

‘Many times over the years I’ve wished you dead, if only to throw the burden of you off my back. You’ve been a millstone about the neck of many,
Mercy. I will not lie. For each life you “live”, one of us must watch over you — as though we have nothing better to do than witness you blundering through the human world, stirring echoes enough for Luc to follow. I wanted to forget you, more than anything. But I haven’t been permitted to do so.’ He scowls. ‘You were dangerous then, and you’re even more dangerous now, only you don’t know why. But I didn’t come here today to destroy you.’