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.
‘She’s never told them about any of it,
you see. She could never bring herself to talk to them in any detail about what happened; not the real way it played out. But she suddenly opened up, and all she wanted to talk about was you. And now they want to speak to you. They want to thank you themselves. And I was dumb enough to think it might finally be okay to share your existence with the people I love most in the world.’
He braces himself on one elbow and moves his finger across the screen’s smooth surface as if he’s painting. Then I see a word appear there: Lauren. Hear a dial tone. My eyes widen as Lauren’s face is suddenly there. I get a flash of perfect white teeth as she smiles, and I’m astonished at the change in her, how the surface cracks have been so readily papered over. She’s still gaunt, still ragged at the edges, but, like me, she’s a carefully curated collection of props, put together to make her seem like an ordinary girl again. Under the veneer, though, there’s something else entirely.
‘Is she there?’ she asks Ryan eagerly. ‘Can I go get them?’ I get a view of the room Lauren’s in. It’s morning, I can tell by the background light. And I know that room: it’s her bedroom; I recognise the dresser. But it’s changed almost out of sight since I stayed in it when I was Carmen. It’s not a girly room any more. The stretch of wall I can see has been painted a vibrant purple and doesn’t have a single poster on it; and all the photographs and knick-knacks that were on the dresser are gone. It’s as bare as the wall.
I look at Ryan, shake my head quickly, mouth: No. No. Wait.
But Ryan just shoves the phone into my hand, a dangerous expression on his face.
For a second Lauren just stares at me, puzzled. ‘Mercy? Is that you?’
I try to hand the phone back to Ryan and all she gets is a muddled view of the Gulfstream’s softly lit interior.
‘Ryan?’ she says. ‘Are you there? What’s going on?’
‘Tell her,’ Ryan says fiercely, refusing to take the phone I’m holding out to him. We wrestle with it for a moment. ‘Don’t make me look like a crazy on top of everything else. Tell her. No, show her.’ He shoves the screen back in front of my face. ‘Show her,’ he commands.