Then Michael walks back down into the water and all my people follow him. Waves of up to ten feet, then twenty, break over them as they keep moving out towards the reef without faltering.
The four of us who remain cluster together in a tight knot on the beach, like drenched cattle, watching. Everything in me wants to be with my people, wants to shift so that I might wreak my fury upon Luc with my own hands, but I can’t move. I have to stick to the plan, pretend I’m human just one last time.
Still the waves beyond the reef keep growing, until they are forty feet, sixty feet, eighty feet in height, their crests as tall as apartment buildings — and then the jagged black teeth of the reef seem to move, too. The reef that gives Coronado Beach its name rears out of the surf, water streaming down its sheared-off, deadly facets. Raphael is bound to its black and twisted crown, by chains of fire that crisscross his body.
Everything stops then, time stands still.
There is no wind, no rain, even the sea is as still as glass, the waves beyond the reef — those eighty-foot, no, hundred-foot waves — frozen there like icebergs.
Luc and his people come, thousands of winged and monstrous faceless or misshapen beings that he and his exiles have created to do their bidding, like murderous dogs. I see three or four score of his original fallen shining here and there amongst the mass. They part around the base of the crowned reef, before rejoining and coming to a standstill before Michael, his forces ranged behind him.
A quarter of a mile of sea, no more, separates two halves of a people that were once whole and united.
Michael’s forces are far fewer in number, less than three hundred brave souls to meet the most putrid and evil force this earth has ever witnessed. I don’t see how we could ever win, could ever hold back such a gruesome host.
Seeing Luc paralyses me. He is as he was in Milan, that sexy, modern Luc that I never knew, as dazzling as the sun, drawing all eyes to him. And even now — even when I know what he did to me, how I was hurled down from Heaven by his own hand — the thought of what he used to be like, what we once shared, hits me like a sucker punch to the head.
Something splinters inside me as I see Gudrun, with her bright yellow hair, sapphire eyes and ruby red mouth, step forward from amongst Luc’s people. She places her hand upon Luc’s arm, possessively, and, for a moment, I feel jealous and ugly and cast off. It’s crazy, I know it is, but I can’t help it, seeing Luc again. Almost as if I’m sleepwalking, I wrench myself out of Ryan’s arms and move towards the water.
I hear him curse and stumble after me. Lauren and Richard follow, to keep me hidden, to keep me safe, loyal unto the end. Where the waterline is frozen upon the sand, Ryan enfolds me in a vicelike grip and will not let me go any closer.
‘Are you nuts?’ he hisses at me.
I can barely drag my gaze away from Luc to meet Ryan’s eyes, and what he sees there makes him shudder.
Luc and Michael glare at each other across the frozen waves: one so pale, beautiful beyond belief; the other dark and fiery in countenance, his black eyes snapping with anger.
‘Mercy for Raphael,’ Luc snarls, his voice echoing off the cliffs, the iron-hard water, ‘or I waste Raphael, I waste this planet, nothing survives. And even when Raphael is back among you, you’d better start running. Because once her soul is back within my grasp, nothing will be safe. It will be open season on the elohim and their servants and on the Kingdom of Heaven.’ His voice drops to a murmur. ‘You should have killed me when you had the chance. For when the new regime arises from the ashes of the old, you will be the first put to death for exiling me all those years ago.’
Michael stands his ground calmly. ‘By that same measure, you, too, are guilty. For you sacrificed Mercy, who was innocent of any crime but loving you.’
Luc laughs, and the sound makes me flinch within the tight circle of Ryan’s arms. ‘Ancient history, brother, the old rules no longer hold. Your bargain was false. You agreed to recognise me as standing higher than God if I gave up the one thing that was most precious to me. And I did. I gave her up.’
‘You tried to murder her,’ Michael bellows.
‘I gave her up — utterly!’ Luc snarls back. ‘While you broke your word. Give her to me now,’ he roars. ‘Or I start with Raphael. Then we will rend all of you limb from limb.’
He scans the small force arrayed behind Michael with narrowed eyes and the searing pain returns as I feel Luc’s consciousness searching for me, trying again to single me out, to open that deadly two-way channel that only we share.
I fight to keep myself closed off from him. Ryan feels me tremble within his embrace and whispers so that only I can hear: Stay strong. I love you. God, how I wish it was enough.
Luc raises one of his beautiful, long-fingered hands high and the chains of fire that bind Raphael flame up with shocking brightness. Raphael cries out in anguish from where he is bound high upon the rock.
Maybe only I see the small, drifting light that moves into the space between the Archangel Michael and his eternal nemesis. It stills upon the surface of the frozen sea for a moment, drawing power from the two beings on either side of it, then it flares more brightly and takes the form of the young girl I saw in the Daleys’ garden, blurry and unstable in outline, but clearer than she was last night.
‘Lord,’ she says beseechingly, kneeling before Lucifer, head bowed, turning her back upon Michael and those she knowingly betrayed. ‘I am dying. Give me what you promised, before it begins and you forget. I found her when no other amongst your people could find her. I shadowed her as you asked — across half the world — and I have suffered, how I have suffered. Give me a warm body, a living body in which to end my days. There are humans upon the beach; give me one of them for my own.’
I feel the others draw tight around me at the creature’s words, sense their fear.
Luc looks down upon her bowed head for an instant, then puts a hand beneath her chin, lifts her sweet, lost face to his, so far above.
‘You have been faithful, my child,’ he says kindly. ‘And for your faithful service I give you what you ask — an end to your suffering.’
Faster than the human eye can follow, there’s a blazing dagger in his hand and he cuts her throat, the way he cut K’el down, without a flicker of emotion.
There’s no heat, no energy, when she dies. Her outline just seems to collapse, like a cloud of dust, and she’s gone.
I think I try to scream, but Ryan has felt it building in my body and he’s got his hand over my mouth, his arms binding me to him fiercely, before I can make a sound. My keeper, my anchor, my rock. Always.
‘Release him to me, Devil,’ Michael thunders.
The chains of fire that hold Raphael to the stone dissolve and he falls from a great height onto the surface of the glassy, unmoving sea, lying still for so long that Richard mutters against Ryan’s ear, ‘Dude, está muerto.’
But Raphael finally stirs, pushing himself up from the ground, his long, dark hair straggling across the strong, angular planes of his face. He drags himself slowly to his feet and stumbles through the ranks of Luc’s bastard children, who jostle and assault him as he passes. His sable eyes are clouded with agony, light bleeds from the wounds of his torment. I cover my mouth with my hands at the sight of him.
I’m suddenly overwhelmed by snatches, fragments, of memory. Of Raphael laughing; of him and me walking arm in arm upon the surface of some lonely world; of me telling him it would always be hopeless, that I’d never love him the way that I loved Luc. Raphael was patience and kindness, compassion and propriety, but none of it had mattered to me then.
The way Raphael has tried to keep me alive all these years — all of it was motivated by love. Even if the way it all panned out felt like the opposite of love, felt like punishment.
‘Luc has hurt everyone I ever cared about,’ I say tautly. And I feel the muscles of Ryan’s body go rigid at my words.
Across the water, Luc roars, ‘Give her to me then you shall h
ave your “brother”.’
He spits the word, throwing his right arm out like a barrier. Raphael cries out from behind him, held in place by some invisible force.
There is a ripple of movement amongst the ranks standing behind Michael, and from the very back of that shining throng comes … me. In robes of blazing white, my long dark hair hanging down my back, my arms and feet bare.
I see myself drift through the gathered angels towards Michael, see Michael place a hand upon my shoulder to halt me beside him.
‘Like for like,’ he bellows.
At Michael’s words, Luc lowers his right arm, causing Raphael to lurch into motion again.
He stumbles forward towards the false Mercy standing next to Michael, indescribable longing on his face. He falls to his knees, and looks up as if begging for forgiveness.
‘It was my fault you were sacrificed,’ he says. ‘You know I loved you beyond measure. You know that, more than once, I tried to win you from Luc, because I knew his true character — the one he hid from you. I knew how he sought to place himself higher than Michael, higher even than God. In desperation, I begged Michael to force Luc’s hand. Make a bargain with him, I urged. Get Luc to declare before us all what it is that he wants and let him believe he will have his way. But first, Luc had to give you up forever.
‘But Luc saw what moved me. If he could not have you, then neither could I. For exiling you when it was not within his province to do so, Luc was himself summarily exiled.’
Luc doomed me for millennia because he was jealous of Raphael. I let out a small whimper and Ryan grips me fiercely. I turn my face into the hard line of his body so that no one will see the tears — hot and bright — spilling down my face.
Raphael looks up at the being he thinks is me. ‘Forgive me,’ he pleads. ‘For I thought I was the truest friend you would ever have. I tried to save you — and in saving you, I damned you for centuries.’
I start to shake again in Ryan’s arms as I turn and gaze at Raphael in the distance. Love and loyalty lay at the heart of everything, but how dark and twisted a path grew from them.
Raphael lurches to his feet, moving into the space between Luc and Michael. ‘Return to your rightful place at my side,’ he begs. ‘Be with me. Let me somehow counterweigh the years, the suffering.’
Luc laughs derisively, the sound like steel on steel, ugly and grating, filling the skies.
I almost tear myself away from Ryan then and run, down towards Raphael’s bent and wounded figure. I want so desperately to hold him in my arms again and tell him not to speak of fault or blame; that I understand, and that I’m finally at peace with what was done to me. But I have to maintain the fiction, hold the line.
Uriel, wearing my face, says brusquely in my voice, ‘The choice is made, the bargain struck.’
And Raphael, hanging his head in grief, has no choice but to walk past me, to let me go.
But before Uriel can reach Luc and seize him, Gudrun steps forward and grabs him by the hand. The left hand.
Horror rises in me as I realise, even before Luc does, what she is doing.
‘Betrayal!’ Gudrun shrieks. ‘We are betrayed!’
She raises Uriel’s left hand high and Luc sees in an instant that it does not burn with an incandescent scar — for it does not burn at all.
Uriel’s disguise falls away and he is himself once more. For a moment — like an ache in time, a breath suspended — every soul upon that beach freezes.
Then Luc’s blazing weapon is in his hand and he plunges it towards Uriel’s chest before any of us can move or cry out. But Uriel is almost Luc’s equal in power — for he is counted second in strength only to the great Michael himself — and he throws himself sideways. Luc’s blade slices across his forearm, leaving a deep and blazing score, but it does not kill him. Then Uriel vaporises.
‘Where are you?’ Luc screams, scanning the beach wildly, and that terrible pain lashes me anew as he seeks a way in, a weakness, an opening. It feels as if I’m being torn apart from the inside, and then he begins to bellow: ‘H—’
The instant Luc begins to say my name, every angel on Coronado Beach, from lowest to highest, transfigures to resemble me. They scatter in every direction, flaming swords igniting in every hand. But in this whirl of white fire and movement, I fall to the ground, convulsing and helpless. For Luc is roaring my name, my true name, again and again.
Ryan curses and scoops me up into his arms.
I hear Richard gasp, ‘Move, chicos. Move or die,’ and get a dim sense of him and Lauren running and stumbling for their lives.
Ryan hauls me towards the motorbike we left parked further up the beach. The air resounds with the crack of blade meeting blade, the sizzle of holy fire meeting its polar opposite. Over and over, I catch glimpses of myself everywhere — my face, my dark eyes, my long, straight hair, my strong-limbed form. It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake from: seeing myself flee and fall, fight and die, time and again, in a howl of vaporising energy.
I’m sobbing uncontrollably from the horror as Ryan throws me onto the bike, then guns the engine, not bothering with the helmets, shouting at me to hold on. I clasp my arms around him from behind, press my tear-streaked face against the back of his battered jacket as we take the stairs at full throttle.
I know I shouldn’t look back, but I do, and I’m so overwhelmed by what I see that I almost let go of Ryan, almost fall. Every single angel does battle in my name. Every demon battles me. I have been a legend, a pariah, a lost cause, for many, many years, yet many of my brethren make the ultimate sacrifice to protect me.
I can’t stop my left hand flaming into life the way Uriel’s never could have, and the wound that Luc gave me all those years ago burns so brightly, so fiercely, that Ryan cries out as he catches sight of it wrapped around him, almost losing control of the bike as we crest the hill.
As we speed past the trees, the rain starts again, obliterating the world around us.
At the crossroads, Richard pulls up alongside Ryan and screams, ‘Where to now?’
I gesture left, indicating the gates we passed on our way here what feels like a lifetime ago. Richard nods, and roars off up the coastal highway towards the abandoned military installation, Ryan and me following.
At the gates, Richard jumps off his bike and fumbles open the black bag clipped to the back. He digs through the jumble of human weaponry stashed inside it and takes out a pair of boltcutters, slices open the chains that keep the gates closed against trespassers.
It’s some kind of abandoned airbase. There’s a vast expanse of cracked tarmac beyond a row of identical houses to our left, their front doors riddled with bullet holes. Long grass has overtaken a lot of the land. In the distance, through the pounding rain, I can make out an iron jetty that extends into the water; concrete bunkers built into some of the hills overlooking the sea. There are a couple of large, rusting steel hangars each with a double band of broken windows running around the walls and loudspeakers mounted in groups of three on the roof.
We ride up to the first of them, and Richard dismounts and studies the sliding doors for a moment before simply pushing one of them open. Then we’re inside. The sound of the rain upon the steel roof is very loud.
As the others take off their helmets, I say, ‘This is the place. For me, time stops here.’
Ryan turns and looks at me, his heart in his eyes. Lauren takes one look at her brother’s face and drags Richard away, to give us space. They clutch each other tightly by the hangar doors as Ryan closes his arms around me fiercely.
I shift, one last time, so that he’s looking at me. And I whisper, ‘I told you once how miraculous you are: that you were somehow able to find me and love me when I had no face of my own, no body. From life to life you’ve been my rock, my friend, my protector, my constant. You were right when you said I’d never find anyone like you, or what we have, anywhere else. You’ve been my solace and my greatest joy, and I love you, Ryan Daley, and I thank you. And I will
always, always miss you and be thinking of you until “some day” comes.’
He tips his head back in that way I’ve come to recognise: as if he can somehow rein in strong emotion, hold back his tears.
I lean up and pull his mouth down to mine and kiss him, as the wind shrieks through the catwalks and steel beams crisscrossing the space above our heads. Then he’s kissing my face, my eyes, pulling me into him, weeping into my shining hair, his strong, lean body racked by the strength of his feeling.
‘Touching,’ a voice drawls, ‘but ultimately pointless.’
Ryan and I freeze in horror as we see Luc outlined against the back windows of this empty, dusty space, Gudrun beside him. A dozen of his strongest fallen are ranged around them.
Luc walks forward, his long, luminous robes open to the waist to display his preternatural shining beauty to its best advantage, that scar that burns in the centre of his chest. The sight of him makes me recoil, causes me to stumble backwards.
‘Seen from the air, your telltale scar such as we all wear,’ he gestures around him at his faithful, ‘cannot be disguised.’
Gabriel, Michael and Uriel materialise behind Ryan and me, wings outspread, flaming swords raised before them.
‘You’re already too late,’ Luc roars, surging forward to grasp my left hand, wrenching me out of Ryan’s grasp.
At Luc’s touch, the flames grow brighter, flare higher, and I cry out in agony.
‘She is mine,’ Luc snarls. ‘I made her what she is. She is my chattel, my possession, my slave once more, and I will do with her as I will.’
Ryan starts forward, but Gudrun swiftly bars his way, planting a long, red-painted fingernail in the centre of his chest. ‘So pretty,’ she purrs.
‘But a hindrance,’ Luc snaps, releasing me suddenly.
Before I even see him move, he is gripping Ryan by the front of his throat. He plunges his other hand into Ryan’s chest as if he would pull Ryan’s soul free of his living body and devour it before us all.
‘NO!’ Lauren and I scream together.