Uriel is silent for a long time as we rise and rise and rise. We’re spearing straight into the sky side by side, so far above the surface of the earth that the air is soon choppy and frigid. The blush of a new dawn seems to be following in our wake, as if we are drawing a veil of light across the world, as if we are its sun.
We’re so far up now, that I seem to see the world curving beneath us, hear the vast sound of it turning. Like a giant, slowly grinding wheel.
‘We’re too high,’ I say sharply to Uriel.
He flies on in silence, his long, dark hair slipstreaming out behind him. His form is massive in comparison to mine, still winged, still deadly. He’s a thing of such singular, gleaming beauty, built along such mythical lines, that I can hardly look away.
‘It will kill Ryan, to be this high,’ I insist harshly. ‘He hasn’t moved, he might be dead. We need to take him down. Give him to me.’
Uriel glances at me with an unfathomable expression in his dark eyes, before refocusing upon the horizon, still holding Ryan out of my reach.
‘Every moment he’s with you puts him at mortal risk,’ he says finally. ‘Let him sleep until wakefulness is required; it will be less hard on him. He’ll do well enough with me.’
I realise then that Uriel is doing this deliberately, keeping Ryan under, keeping him away from me, as if he fears I’ll be tempted to do something bold, something stupid, like escape with Ryan; the two of us fugitives forever from all that dwell above and below. And I’m seriously tempted to try, but nowhere on earth would ever be safe again, and no matter how much I love him and ache to be with him, Ryan never signed up for that.
‘You still don’t trust me,’ I say bitterly, almost to myself. ‘And why would you?’
Uriel doesn’t reply, he just picks up speed, streaking away through the lightening sky. I find myself fighting to keep up, still feeling the effects of the cloud giants’ icy, paralysing touch in my system.
‘They were nephilim,’ Uriel calls out suddenly over his shoulder, as if responding to a question I’ve just asked. ‘And you were lucky. Ryan drew them to him first, but you, I think, were unexpected. They were uncertain about you, and it made them slow to act. They are usually fatal to the unwary.’
I draw abreast of him, only because he’s letting me.
‘Lucky you were there,’ I say.
‘I had nothing to sacrifice, nothing to lose, unlike you.’ His voice is very quiet. ‘You’ve changed so much,’ he considers my human disguise wryly, ‘both inside and out, that I hardly recognise you.’
‘The creature you used to know is separated from the being I am now by an unfordable river. Everything that has happened to me has made me who I am,’ I reply.
Without warning, Uriel’s luminous wings shred into nothingness, as if we have left some zone of immediate danger.
‘We’re safe enough, for now,’ he says, glancing sideways at me. ‘No demon could trouble us for long at this elevation. Though they crave the sun, they have no hope ever of reaching it. If he were not with us,’ he looks briefly at Ryan, silent in his arms, ‘I would already be in the skies above Huayna Picchu, scouring the great ruins below for any sign of Gabriel. When we reach Cusco, we three must part ways. Ryan will be safer amongst his own kind.’
‘At least let us help you find Gabriel,’ I plead.
Uriel’s gaze is shrewd. ‘And buy you both more time together? I think not, sister.’
‘I have agreed to nothing; neither has Ryan,’ I say fiercely. ‘Nothing has been decided.’
Uriel shakes his head. ‘But I am decided.’ His voice is steely, ringing. ‘We part at Cusco.’
Without looking at me again, he surges away through the skies, knowing I am forced to follow while he holds my love captive in his arms.
We are silent for leagues, eating up the distance without need of rest — hundreds of miles passing in the blink of an eye. Tiny pinpoints of rock begin to appear in the ocean far below, and I feel Uriel turn us to the south. We fly over a small atoll of islands, scattered like random beads across the ocean. The air beneath us grows grey-dappled, then progressively more impenetrable the further south we move. The skies are thick with a stinking grey haze, a vast plume that is redolent of sulphur, ash and grit.
‘Laysan Island, the Gardner Pinnacles, Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu,’ Uriel says suddenly, taking us down.
We scream through the atmosphere at thousands of feet per second, falling out of the sky like missiles, and I begin to see the red glow of fire deep within the grey. Suddenly I see the cause of the haze: a giant island alive with fire — lava, cinders, ash spewing forth from a multitude of summits and vents and fissures, rocks falling into the sea as if hurled by unruly giants. The name of the place comes to me unbidden: Hawai’i.
‘One by one, they come to life,’ Uriel calls over his shoulder. ‘Every one destructive, a tragedy on its own, but together …’
He climbs again above the gritty smog and we rapidly leave the long, dirty plume behind, the grey stain stretching away from us to the north and the west.
‘Why don’t you stop them?’ I shout accusingly as I try in vain to chase him down. ‘If you’re so powerful, so close to Him, why let these disasters, these tragedies, even happen? You’re the ones with all the answers. Do something.’
Uriel flows to a sudden stop, blazing with anger, Ryan still held fast in his arms. I stop, too, suddenly very afraid of what he will do.
‘These are the conditions of this world,’ he thunders. ‘Conditions that Luc now exploits for his own ends. Despite everything that happens here, life continues to flourish; and that is the continuing miracle — that life persists. Do you think that we rejoice when any life is lost in unnatural circumstances? Well, do you?’
I shake my head, stunned to see the vehemence and repudiation in his expressive face, the great sorrow brimming in his dark, wide-set eyes.
‘You’re not the only one among the elohim that actually feels,’ he says bitingly. ‘There are simply not enough of us to guard against everything, to save everyone. So some are spared while others perish, and there seems no fairness in anything, no system, no order. But we do what we can, and we can do no more.
‘Life in this world is already dark, already messy enough, without the active interference of the Devil and his legions. The vast majority of Luc’s daemonium will never be as powerful as a single elohim, for most did not fall as Luc did, they were created out of the leavings of this world. But what the daemonium lack in grace, in speed, in power, they make up for in ferocity and sheer numbers. While our kind can only ever dwindle over time, the daemonium can and always will be replenished while Luc lives.
‘You have accused us before of being merely “watchers” — but how, in truth, is the life of one man to be balanced against another? Every action has a consequence; and we see each one stretch out before us endlessly even before we act. We fight a battle that has many fronts, and these fronts open and shift and change constantly. Some have “natural” causes, others do not. It is our burden and our rationale, and we accept it.’
His voice is suddenly gentler. ‘And that, Mercy, is why you must leave. Life will persist here regardless of what you do. Ryan’s people are tenacious — they have weathered so much. But Luc cannot be allowed to export the terror and the evil he deals in beyond this place. It is the time for selflessness, Mercy, for letting go. To rage against the conditions we face — that way lies insanity and paralysis.’
Then he turns and flows away, Ryan held as gently and carefully in his arms as a small child. And I think that this is the closest I have ever come to the mystery that lies at the heart of the Eight, and I am momentarily ashamed to have added to their cares and their sorrows. My love seems so small in comparison to theirs, but it is the very centre of my world now, of who I am.
And that is the paradox: I see what I must do, but it would tear me apart to do it.
The sun is high overhead as we cross the equator, and dark clouds gat
her above us as Uriel begins to take us down. As we cross the seas towards the mainland, he calls, ‘The Nazca Plate lies directly beneath us, the Volcán Llaima to the south. See what Luc has wrought in my absence, in mere days.’
The coastline we are crossing is obscured by a creeping grey fog. There’s nothing but dark above our heads, and a growing darkness before us as Uriel indicates peak after peak to the south spewing forth ash and grit and lava for miles along the coastline.
‘Some have been dead for centuries,’ he tells me. ‘But now Luc brings the Ring of Fire to life on every side; from here to the isles of Japan. It is only the beginning.’
Rain begins to fall as we angle northward along the coast, and develops into squalling winds and a heavy wet-season downpour that obliterates all light. Uriel does his best to shield Ryan from the worst of the storm, which touches neither of us. Lightning cuts through the sky repeatedly, briefly illuminating our approach towards a sprawling river-valley township ringed by immense mountains. The low, white-walled, red-roofed buildings are centred around a great square that gleams a lighter grey in the general greyness and is divided by patches of greenery, electric lampposts, footpaths, flowerbeds, a fountain, green benches. Two towering, Baroque-style stone churches, each in possession of two grand belltowers, face directly onto the square, as do several graceful stone arcades punctuated by archways. There is no one upon the surrounding streets or in the square.
As we approach the square from above at great speed, Uriel says inside my head, The Plaza de Armas, Square of the Warrior. It is only fitting that this is where we should part. For you have been braver and truer than you know.
We descend through day that has become night, through howling wind and stinging rain, towards a patch of greenery in the shadow of one of the great churches. We’re still about three hundred feet off the ground when Uriel mutters a single word into Ryan’s closed eyes: a word of command, of waking. I am above and behind Uriel as we descend, shielded from sight by him, and I alone catch the instant that Ryan’s eyes flash open to take in Uriel’s stern countenance over his. Uriel’s eyes are focused on the distant ground beneath us, and not upon the human he bears.
I see Ryan’s emotions chase each other across his face. For he’s often gazed upon that simple pencil sketch he keeps of me, I know, meditated upon it, matched it up against reality. Now, I literally see him thinking: Like Mercy. Not Mercy. Demon.
All this takes only seconds.
Then Ryan does the bravest, most misguided, stupidest thing I’ve ever seen him do. He closes his eyes, his lips moving silently in prayer, or farewell, and he dives backwards out of Uriel’s arms.
He’s falling like a stone through the sky, the rain soaking him instantly, making his heavy, mortal body even heavier, second by second. His eyes are closed and he’s as graceful, as accepting, as a diver. There’s no messy struggle; the lines of his body are tight and clean, arms outstretched. He makes no sound as he falls, still wearing that stupid backpack across his shoulders. He’d rather be dead, because he thinks that I must be. For he saw me surrender to the demons in Tokyo, and then woke to find himself in the grasp of a being of fire that looked like me but was not me and must therefore be some fiend, some shape-shifter demon.
I am all reaction, no thought, as I pull myself instantly into a tight downward spiral and try to catch him on the way down, catch him before he hits the granite walkways that bisect the Plaza de Armas.
Uriel’s so shocked, so unable to credit what Ryan has done, that he’s seconds behind me as I catch hold of Ryan by the hands. The force of our coming together threatens to rip his arms from their sockets. His eyes fly open as my fingers tighten convulsively around his. We’ve formed an imperfect circle, an ellipse, with our joined hands, and we’re spinning and spiralling through the air as centrifugal forces, gravity, take us over.
There’s no time to do anything but accept the ground rushing up to meet us, and I curve myself protectively around Ryan’s body the way I did when we collided with the great glass and steel roof of the Galleria in Milan, using every fibre of my being to cushion the impact of the blow when we hit the ground. Entwined and entangled together, we tumble across the rain-slick grass, skid over the cobbled surface of the Plaza, before coming to rest hard up against the base of a lamppost.
I lie there, shocked into immobility by the fall; a fall that has stirred up echoes in me of that other time. But this time, I am not burnt, blackened or near death. I am whole and very much alive.
It may be seconds, or hours, before I roll Ryan off me onto his back. His eyes are closed, but his life force pulses beneath my fingers and he starts to cough. The sound is harsh and painful. I place a steadying hand upon him as the rain beats down, feel his racing heartbeat below my palm.
I continue to lie there, staring up without blinking into the torrent falling out of the sky, seeming to see every drop, every needle of rain coming down, even up to its source. Maybe this is all we can ever be, I think in relief, in anguish. Only ever one second away from disaster, from ruin.
And I see that maybe Uriel is right: that if being with me could drive Ryan to do this, then I should go.
Uriel falls out of the sky beside us, landing lightly on his feet. I only vaguely register that he’s human-sized again, sporting the floppy, college-boy haircut, thin wire-framed spectacles and preppy designer gear he was wearing in Tokyo.
Ryan opens his eyes, looks up into Uriel’s face and some kind of primal recognition flares in them. He sits bolt upright, slamming the back of his head against the lamppost behind him in his haste to put some distance between himself and Uri. Then he realises that I haven’t moved at all, that I’m not even faintly concerned, and he looks from Uriel to me, from me to Uriel, in numb disbelief.
‘You say Luc and I could be twins,’ he says harshly. ‘What’s the deal with this guy?’
He braces himself against the glistening lamppost and uses it to slide upright onto his feet, then checks himself automatically for bruises, for fractures. The rain is seeping into his mouth, streaking down through his spiky, growing-back hair, the stubble on his face. He glares down at me where I’m still lying on the ground, motionless beneath the driving rain.
The tone of his voice and the very sight of him suddenly make me so furious that I’m on my feet before I register it, pummelling his chest with both my fists. Ryan retreats from the force of my blows.
‘Why bother?’ I scream into his face. ‘Why bother asking who he is? Why even check if you’re still in one piece when you just tried to commit suicide from three hundred feet? I’ll kill you myself if you ever pull a stunt like that again!’
‘Mercy,’ Uriel says warningly, and my anger dissolves into a tight feeling inside me, like unshed tears. I back away from both of them, crossing my arms tightly against my chest to protect myself from any more hurt.
Uriel walks over to Ryan and they eye each other warily, of a similar height and build, their body language indicating each is unprepared to be cowed by the other.
‘I’m Uriel,’ he says, putting out one hand awkwardly, in the human way, to be shaken.
‘You’ve never met before,’ I interject acidly, ‘but he’s been inside your house, Ryan. He has a habit of just turning up and giving people orders. Like how he wants us to go our separate ways, from here, now, today.’
‘In my house?’ Ryan looks down at Uri’s hand almost in horror, as if it might turn into a snake and bite him. He makes no move to take it.
‘Penalty time is over, Ryan,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light, though I’m gripped by that aching grief. ‘Because Uriel says so. I never did tell you, did I, about how much we resemble each other? About how, like you, I’m curiously twinned. Uriel tries to deny it, but our resemblance is proof to me that God exists, and has a sense of humour.’
Uriel glares at me, unamused, and lets his hand fall back down to his side. ‘Say what you have to say to each other,’ he snaps, ‘then get out of the way and let the real
work begin.’
Ryan crosses his arms belligerently. ‘What happened to the right to choose?’ he snarls. ‘It’s not something reserved for you high and mighty elohim. I don’t choose to leave, and neither does Mercy. Not yet, not now, not when the world is literally going to hell. She can still do good down here. She can help you in ways you can’t begin to imagine. She can help you get Luc —’
Uriel moves so quickly, bunching one of his fists into the front of Ryan’s jacket and hauling him close, that Ryan turns pale with shock. The breath freezes in his throat at something dangerous he sees in Uri’s face, only inches from his, but he keeps speaking anyway. ‘The only beings that can contain Luc are you Eight and Mercy. She can still play a part. She’s already killed some of them, you know, some of Luc’s people.’
Uriel’s eyes snap to mine, though he doesn’t relax his grip on Ryan. ‘How many? What order?’ he barks.
‘Ananel, Remiel, Neqael and Turael,’ I say, seeing recognition and then astonishment in his gaze. ‘All first order. All once elohim, as you well know. Turns out I’m a natural at this killing thing.’ My voice dies away.
Uriel’s eyes flick back to Ryan’s as Ryan adds quietly, ‘And I’m still useful. Look at you, look at her, then look at me, and tell me you don’t need the kind of help I can give you …’
Uriel looks down at himself sharply, then across at me, and I think I get it a second before he does. Ryan is soaking wet; he looks like he fell in the Pacific Ocean on his way over. But Uriel and I are both bone dry. There’s not a mark on us. Before the rain can even touch our hair, our skin, our fake human gear, it burns off, vanishing completely.
Uriel suddenly releases Ryan’s jacket front, and Ryan rocks back on his heels in obvious relief.
That’s when I hear the children.
They come out of the stone archway by the church and head for Uriel, chanting, ‘Ayar Awqa! Ayar Awqa!’