That pressure shifted, growing, and Daisy’s heart gave a painful thump. It wasn’t sadness, it was something else. She put a hand – the one she didn’t really have in this place – against her chest, feeling the coldness there, and when she looked down tongues of flame licked between her fingers.
Oh no, she said. It’s happening.
Her angel was hatching.
‘Daisy?’ Another voice this time, from somewhere close by. She peered between the huge, grinding ice cubes to see the new boy there, Howie – not his physical body, that was with Rilke, in the storm, this was just the other part of him. His soul, she guessed. He was the same age as her. Maybe a little older. A pocket of fire sat in his chest too, spreading up towards his shoulders and down to his tummy like he was made of straw. He looked terrified, his eyes wide and white, staring at himself like a boy who had seen spiders burst from his skin.
‘It’s okay,’ she said to him, trying to hide her own fear. She held out her hands and in an instant he was next to her, hugging her, his not-real-head buried into her not-real-shoulder. She stroked his hair, whispering to him, ‘Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you, they’re here to keep us safe. They’re good, they’re friendly. Don’t be scared.’
It didn’t hurt, it was more like when you go swimming and you first get into the water – so cold to start with but soon you didn’t even notice it. Already the icy touch of the flames had reached her neck, now her chin. She held Howie and he held her, both of them going up in flames together. Something was chiming inside her head, a tune almost like the one her little music box had played when she was a kid. There were no words there, and yet she knew that this was a voice, that it was its voice.
‘Can you hear that?’ she asked, feeling Howie nod against her. ‘It’s not scary, is it?’
She looked down to see that the fire was everywhere now, all over her, inside her too. She felt as weightless as air, as though she was a beam of light. Motes of dust bobbed around her, drawn to her, and the ice was melting despite the chill, rivulets of crystal-clear water forming a pool beneath her feet. The tune in her head grew louder as her angel found its voice, and even though she could not understand it she still knew what it was showing her – the billion years of its life laid out in a single second. There was no time to process it before she felt herself pulled up, the same way she sometimes rose from dreams, like a diver being winched from the ocean on a rope. She screwed her eyes shut against the sudden rush of vertigo.
It will be okay, she said as Howie vanished, heading back to his body in the real world. He would be an angel too now, she knew. Trust me.
She breached the surface of the dream ocean, the real world knitting itself around her – a church, stained-glass windows, wooden pews – but nothing looking like it had before. She felt as though she could peer into the very heart of things, see the building blocks there, the little atoms and their orbits. If she wanted, she could pull them apart with just a thought. Her fire was the brightest thing here, blazing forth from her, kicking out a bass hum that seemed to make everything tremble.
It wasn’t so bad, was it? It was—
And then it hit her, a sudden panic, the awful knowledge of what she was. She looked at herself, at the inferno of her skin, the way her hands seemed translucent, tiny blots of energy surging up and down her fingers. Something was pushing at her back, too, as if her ribs were trying to claw their way free – not pain, just a maddening itch. And when she realised what it was – my wings oh God oh God – she shrieked, the noise that of a monstrous baby bird pushing from its shell.
She turned, trying to see them, but the motion carried too much force, launching her across the room. She flew into a wall, her wings twitching, out of her control, sending her spinning back across the church. Somewhere in the wheeling chaos she saw Brick and Cal and little Adam, all of them diving for cover. There was another man too, a vicar by the look of things, screaming at her, lost to the Fury. She held out her hands to the man, trying to tell him not to be scared, but to her horror he detonated into a cloud of ash, hanging ghost-like in the air until he remembered to drift apart.
Daisy screamed, the noise like when the jet engines power up in a plane. Her wings twitched once more, hurling her up into the rafters. Stop it please stop it oh God I just want to go back to being me please please please. But the angel would not hear her, making her thrash against the ceiling, her huge, beating wings loosing an avalanche of ancient wood and stone. She pushed herself away, dropping back to the floor but not hitting it, just hovering above it as though there was an invisible cushion there.
‘Daisy!’ Her name again, but this time it was Cal. She saw him run down the aisle towards her, stumbling on the wreckage of a pew. She held out her hands to him but the movement sent her tumbling back, cartwheeling down the church. She shrieked again, the sound exploding a stained-glass window, flooding darkness with sunlight.
Stay still, stay still, she ordered her body. She froze, listening to the dizzying thrum of the angel – that’s what its heart sounds like – hearing the patter of footsteps. Cal skidded down beside her, squinting against her brightness. It looked just like him, but when she focused hard enough she could see the bits and pieces he was made of: the slick, butcher-shop organs, the pores in his skin, and deeper than that the cells that swam in his blood and the firework show of sparks inside his brain. She didn’t like it, she didn’t like seeing that people were just engines of flesh. But she didn’t turn away in case she hurt him.
‘Daisy, can you hear me?’ he asked. He lifted a hand – a constellation of atoms – as if to place it on her, then seemed to change his mind. ‘Are you okay?’
She didn’t dare reply. Her voice was something else, now, a weapon. It reminded her of what she’d seen just before she had hatched, Rilke and the others, being sucked into the mouth of the storm. That’s why her angel had hatched now, because they needed her to save them. But how? They were all the way over in the city. Even as she asked the question the thing inside her gave an answer, not with its voice, just with an image – her in a field with Adam, trapped in a car, holding hands and somehow moving themselves. Of course, it made sense, didn’t it? Time and space, they weren’t real any more, not to her.
‘Is she okay?’ It was Brick this time, standing at the back of the church with his hands in his copper hair. His face was a mask of concern and she did her best to smile. It didn’t do much to calm him, which wasn’t really a surprise. If she looked anything like Schiller had then her eyes were made of molten steel.
‘I think so,’ said Cal. ‘Daisy, can you hear me?’
Yes, she said, speaking to them inside her head, somehow beaming the words out. This voice couldn’t hurt them. I’m here, Cal, don’t be frightened.
Cal grinned, looking over his shoulder.
‘You hear her?’ he asked, and Brick nodded. Cal turned back. ‘How are you doing that?’
Daisy didn’t answer because she didn’t know. Brick took a few steps down the aisle and Daisy noticed that he was holding Adam’s hand. She called out to him with her mind, getting used to the sound of the words inside her head. Hello, Adam, it’s only me, Daisy. I know I look different but I’m still your friend, okay?
The boy nodded, a shiver of a smile darting over his lips. Daisy took a deep breath – though she didn’t think she even needed air the way she was right now – and pushed herself off the ground. Slow, considered movements, that was the trick. Nothing too dramatic. She rose to her knees then gave her wings an experimental flex. It was weird, like having an extra pair of arms. She felt them cut through the real world like a hot knife through butter, lifting her up until she was standing – no, hovering – over the floor. It felt so strange being up here, taller even than Brick now. She felt like an adult, which was kind of exciting and kind of sad too. She didn’t want to be grown up just yet.
‘What’s it like?’ asked Cal, his eyes looking as if they were about to pop right out of his head.
It d
oesn’t hurt, she answered. It’s . . . I can’t really explain it. It’s like wearing a superhero costume, or driving a car. Yes, it’s a bit like that, a car, because if you do the wrong thing you can hurt someone.
She remembered the vicar, clamping a hand to her mouth as she turned to the far side of the church. All that remained of the man was a little puddle of burning ash. A halo of glowing embers floated in a circle around it, as if they didn’t want to stop living yet, as if they could keep death away with a dance.
Oh no, what did I do? she said. I killed him.
Yet the stew of emotion she was expecting, that unbearable flood of sadness, didn’t come. Once, when she was about eight, she had found a beetle in the back garden, a tiny one about the size of her thumbnail. She had wanted to bring it into the house, to be friends with it and keep it in a matchbox, and she’d tried to get it to climb on to a stick. But it kept scuttling off and running away, and in her frustration she had accidentally jabbed it too hard and killed it dead. She had cried and cried and cried, that poor beetle had died because of her. She had thought that she would never, ever forgive herself.
Now, though, her sadness was a forgotten thing inside her tummy – there, but hidden. The angel is protecting me from it, she realised, like a shield. And with that knowledge came the understanding that it could not last forever, that as soon as she went back to being normal that awful sadness would suddenly be there again.
‘You didn’t mean to, Dais,’ Cal said, using a pew to pull himself to his feet. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
I know, she replied. She would mourn him later, but now there was something else she needed to do. Cal, we have to save them, Rilke and Schiller, they need us. She saw the image in her head, the man in the storm sucking them into his churning mouth, and she knew that Cal and Brick and Adam saw it too. They’re going to die.
At the back of the church, Brick spat out a laugh.
‘They can go screw themselves,’ he said. ‘Why should we help her? She’s done this to herself.’
‘Kind of got a point there,’ said Cal, shrugging. ‘She did ask for it.’
It’s not about her, said Daisy. We need her, we need all of them, if we’re going to fight it. I don’t think we can do it by ourselves. They didn’t have any time, it might already be too late. Please, Cal, we have to go.
The thought of it, of cutting a hole in space and climbing through, finding herself in the shadow of the man in the storm, should have been terrifying. But this too was numbed by the angel. It felt more like an echo of fear, something she couldn’t quite remember. It’s keeping me strong, she thought to herself. Keeping me brave.
Please Cal, she said again, and she held out her hand to him. Plant-like tendrils of light rose up from the stone beneath her, made of nothing but light, each one fading after a moment. Cal studied them, then looked up at her.
‘Do we have a choice?’ he asked.
Of course, she said. You all have a choice. But you have to choose the right one.
Cal looked back at Brick, the two boys sharing a thought that Daisy couldn’t quite read. Then Cal turned to her and nodded his head. His fear pumped out of him in big, black waves but his expression was firm. He swallowed noisily, then took her hand. She seemed to see his whole life play out in a heartbeat, his home and his mum and a pretty girl called Georgia, and her heart grew heavy as if she had lived that life alongside him. She held him gently, careful not to hurt him. Adam pulled himself free from Brick and raced down the aisle, hugging her around the waist.
Brick? she asked. The older boy stood there, shuffling his feet, chewing his lip. She saw the lightning show inside his skull, saw the thoughts there racing back and forth, fighting with each other, and the moment where his decision was made. She didn’t even wait for him to nod. She just used her mind to open up a hole in the air, reality burning away around her as though the skin of the world had caught fire. Behind it was the city and the storm, and with a beat of her wings she pulled them all towards it.
Brick
London, 12.32 p.m.
Daisy didn’t even give him a chance to reply. One second he was standing in the church, wondering how the hell he was going to get out of this one. The next he felt like a spinning top set in motion.
He somersaulted upwards, everything a blur, his stomach scrunching to the size of an acorn. Then his senses snapped back on and he was somewhere else, lying on his back. He opened his mouth to cry out, but all that emerged was a jet of white sick. The air was full of embers, landing on his tongue and leaving their bitter taste. He spat them out, wiping puke from his lips, then struggled into a sitting position.
Daisy was a few metres in front of him. Only it wasn’t Daisy, not any more. The creature she was now, the one that had stolen her body, hovered above the ground, still engulfed in flame. Her wings were like the sails of a burning ship, twice as tall as she was. And the noise she was pumping out was an electrical charge, pulsing through the air, through the ground, making his fingers tingle and his hair stand on end. It made no sense that the little girl he had been carrying just a few hours ago, that bundle of sticklike bones, could now be this. He had to look away.
But what he saw there was infinitely worse.
The sky above the horizon was like an upturned ocean, a roiling sea of darkness whose waves carried the city – Is this London? It can’t be, it can’t be, there’s nothing left – into their depths. And in the middle of the ocean was a shape, illuminated by bolts of black lightning that lashed through the chaos. He hung there like a leviathan, a vast, bloated sea beast churning up the water. The sight was so awful that a groan rose up from Brick’s stomach, feeble and wretched, spilling from his mouth. And before he could stop himself he was sobbing, scrabbling back, screaming, ‘Why did you bring me here? Why?’
‘Brick . . . hold of your . . .’ It was Cal, yelling from where he stood a few metres away, his words snatched away by the howling wind. He was hunkered down, his hair whipping around his face. Adam, the little boy, was still hugging Daisy, his face buried so deep in her stomach that Brick wondered how his skin hadn’t been burned away by the flames. ‘. . . Over here.’
He shook his head, still crawling backwards. He bumped into something, yelping, turning to see a car. It was so covered in orange dust that it looked as though it had been sitting there for a hundred years. He used it to pull himself up, stepped back, his foot plunging into something soft. It was a body, he realised as he looked down. A ringing itch formed in Brick’s mind, something not quite working the way it should up there. He stepped out of the corpse, shaking his encrusted trainer, seeing the other bodies lying like spilled dominoes, dozens of them.
Oh no oh no oh no why hadn’t they left him in the church? It had been safe there, especially with the vicar dead. He could have stayed there for days, for ever.
Because we need you, Brick. Daisy’s voice was so loud in his head, so clear, that she could have been standing there in the flesh of his brain. He even thumped a hand to his temple as if to shake her out. But no, she still hovered there above the pavement, framed by the rubble of a dozen houses, her eyes boiling, spitting flecks of fire, her mouth hanging open to reveal a throat of pure, white light, as if she had swallowed the sun. I need you, Brick, I can’t do this by myself.
‘But what the hell can I do?’ he cried back. Beneath the storm the ground had been erased, a pit that must have been ten miles wide. How could he stand up to a creature that could do that? It would turn him inside out with just a look.
Believe in me, Daisy said. That’s all I need.
He shook his head again, hard, as if he was trying to detach a bluebottle from his thoughts.
Please, Brick.
A deafening clap of thunder blasted from the centre of the storm and Brick looked to see lightning there – not dark this time but bright. A shockwave of scalding air blasted across the city, almost hard enough to knock him backwards, and in the heart of the tornado he thought he saw a huge, gaping maw. Th
ere was a burning shape right next to it, so small that it could have been plankton about to be devoured by a whale. He knew who it was, and he spoke the boy’s name aloud: ‘Schiller.’
I have to go to him, Daisy said inside his head, her voice half hers and half her angel’s. They’ll die if I don’t.
She cast the furnace of her eyes to the sky, at the distant battle that raged there. It was insane. Angel or not, that thing, the man in the storm, would crush her. She was just a little girl.
Cal yelled something that Brick couldn’t make out.
But I have to, she replied. I do. It’s just like the play. Brick had no idea what she meant by that, even though her words carried images into his head – a stage, kids dressed up in old-fashioned clothes – and a worm of discomfort burrowed into his stomach. It’s scary, really scary, but you know you have to do it. She looked at Cal, then at Brick. Be strong. Look after Adam.
‘Daisy, wait!’ Cal said, but it was too late. She flexed her wings, their tips seeming to set fire to the air as if it were paper. There was a flash of light, a gaping hole in the sky, then she was gone. Reality flooded back into the space like water, a pistol crack echoing around the ruined street as the vacuum was filled. Adam staggered forward, almost falling before Brick caught him, both of them standing there in a snowstorm of ash.
Another crack, and Brick looked into the storm to see a flash of light there, right in the heart of its darkness. Daisy, burning bright. She’s just a little girl, he thought, suddenly furious. He smashed himself on the chest with his fist, calling to the creature that slept there. Are you happy now? She’s just a little girl and you’ve killed her.
He took a step towards the storm then stopped. He needed to help her but what could he do? Never in his life had he felt so small, so pathetic. He caught Cal’s eye, saw the frustration there, the powerlessness, mirroring his own.