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.’
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 s
tench 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.