Her expression is wild as she scatters into motes of light, fading away almost instantly. One second I’m there, too, and the next I’m gone, indistinguishable from my surroundings.
Ananel surges towards me, bare-chested and heavily muscled, sleek and predatory, a gleaming dagger with a short, lethal blade clenched between his teeth. Silver bubbles slipstream through his long, midnight hair, the ends of his luminous wings, past the burning scar that lies along the top of his hip, as he sweeps overhead. I see him freeze in disbelief when he spies the rock to which Nuriel was bound, now empty of all life.
But he’s stronger than Remiel was, no longer punch drunk from the cold, and he can sense something, something close, because he grasps his weapon in his right hand, turning and calling out sharply, ‘Nuriel?’
He spins in the water, his shrewd grey eyes scanning the drowned landscape before he hisses, ‘Don’t make me hunt you down, or you’ll wish yourself already dead. We have been greedy, Remiel and I, in keeping your sweetness to ourselves. But, sister’ — at the word of endearment, I have to smother a gasp of revulsion — ‘if you do not show yourself now, I will throw you to the legions at my command so that your agony may be made infinite.’
I flicker into sight just out of striking distance, and Ananel smiles, though it does not reach the darkness in his grey eyes.
I drift before him like a drowned girl, my hair a dark cloud around my shoulders, my luminous robes torn and trailing, bleeding light from the wounds that crisscross my body: all fake, all props. But I see from Ananel’s expression that he believes without question he’s looking at Nuriel, for I’ve made myself a simulacrum of her, a perfect copy, down to the tiny, gleaming defence wounds along the inside of her fingers, the madness in her eyes.
‘Be merciful,’ I plead in her sweet, high voice as I drift there with my hands outstretched in supplication. ‘For I always loved you. Even after all you’ve done to me — I love you still.’
Ananel’s eyes widen for a moment, though he’s quick to disguise his shock. He lowers his blade uncertainly, the deadly weapon vanishing into the palm of his hand. Love is a thing he has not felt for aeons. A demon like he is, denied the kind of love that once surrounded him as freely as the air, must crave it like a drug.
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 do
or. 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.