She laughed, the angel blazed, swept up by the wonder of it. It emanated a silent chime that cut across the void, which found an echo in the other angels, a call that led the way home.
Daisy stretched her wings, tuned in, burned out.
Brick
The Thermosphere, 4.27 p.m.
Brick swam against a current that was way too strong for him, his arms and legs useless against the flow of air. He was still burning, but he didn’t have the energy to transport himself. Rilke had done her best to kill him and she must have come close, everything ached, everything felt wrong. His angel had taken the brunt of it, and now it was running on fumes.
The storm raged around him, sucking him into its throat, back towards the hole at the end of the world. Pieces of planet floated past, breaking up as they went, and through the debris he caught glimpses of her, Rilke, burning as bright as the sun but refusing to fight. He didn’t understand what she was doing. It was as though she’d given up. If she wanted, she could pull them both out of here. She was injured, yes, but only her human body. Her angel was still running at full strength.
Rilke! he called again, for what must have been the hundredth time. Please, don’t do this!
The storm shook, those same ear-pounding artillery shells detonating somewhere outside. There was something else now as well, something that roared even louder than the hurricane. Whatever it was, it had to be working, because the clouds were spinning more slowly, the current weaker.
Not weak enough. He slid down the gullet of the beast, unable to find purchase. It was going to swallow him whole, into the empty infinity of its stomach. The thought of it – an eternity of nothing, an eternity alone – made him howl, the noise coming as much from his angel as from him. He didn’t want to die alone. He’d been by himself for so long, not letting anybody in, not even Lisa. His anger had always filled him up, he’d never made room for anything else.
Rilke, wait! he called to her. If she heard him she made no sign of it, floating downstream in her web of fire. He scrabbled in mid-air, feeling like a parachutist in free fall. Beating the current was one thing, but crossing it was another. She was slightly ahead of him, and he wheeled his arms and legs, steering closer – Hold on, for Christ’s sake – maybe ten metres, then five.
The air between them began to spark, as though somebody was letting off firecrackers. Invisible fingers pushed him back, and he thought it might be her, trying to shunt him away. She was smiling, though, like she was in the middle of a waking dream.
Rilke! he said, using the last of his strength to push himself towards her. Bolts of energy fizzled up his arm as he grabbed her foot. He climbed her like a ladder, too frightened to let go. Just like before, when they’d been fighting, the hum of their hearts rose in pitch, sounding as if they were about to blow up. He hugged her, just grateful to have somebody next to him as he spun towards the end.
What do you want? Rilke asked, staring blindly from the shell of her body.
What was he supposed to say? That he didn’t want to be on his own when the beast devoured him? He didn’t reply, just clung on. It couldn’t be much longer now, the event horizon dead ahead, clouds of matter spiralling around it as they were crushed into dust and sucked inside. Even sound was being pulled in, leaving nothing but silence.
It’s not too late, he said, his voice impossibly loud against the quiet. You can get us out of here.
I’m tired, she replied. I just want to go home. I want to see Schiller.
The storm rocked again, pieces of it crumbling away as the attack continued outside. He clung to Rilke with trembling arms, feeling the pressure build between them. He couldn’t hold on for much longer, but he didn’t need to. In seconds he would simply disintegrate; it would be as if he had never existed.
We don’t want you here, Rilke said. Finally her eyes turned to him, two pools of molten lead and a third in the middle of her forehead, the one he’d made. She lifted her arms and pushed him, but he held on as best he could. It’s just me and my brother. Go away.
No, he said.
Go away!
She shunted him hard, almost slipping out of his hands. They were deep into the deafening silence now, sliding towards the black hole. Rilke was already coming apart, pieces of her crumbling loose as though she were made of sand. Her angel blazed, trying to hold her together. Brick pulled her close again, his terror so intense that it almost didn’t register at all. The air between them pulsed, spitting liquid fire, but he fought it. He would not let go, he would not face the end by himself.
A blinding flash, and suddenly he was inside a room, a library, watching motes of dust drift lazily between the shelves. Schiller sat on a window seat opposite him, his breath misting up the glass. There was nothing out there but gold, as if the room floated in an ocean of sunshine. Brick was crying, but he understood that these weren’t his tears, they belonged to someone else, to Rilke.
‘He’s gone,’ said Schiller, turning to Rilke – to Brick. ‘I won’t let him hurt you again, I promise.’
‘I know, little brother, I know,’ he heard himself say. ‘We’ll keep each other safe, forever. I love you.’
Schiller leant forward and hugged him and the memory – Was that what it had been? – faded. It had been so real that Brick had almost forgotten about the man in the storm, about the black hole at the bottom of its throat. He looked at Rilke, seeing her life as if it had been his own – her dad long gone, her mum insane, and the man, the bad man who said he was a doctor. His face loomed up, his breath stinking of coffee and alcohol, his nails long and dirty. Brick almost screamed, forcing the memory away, the pain that came with it. He scrabbled, trying to keep hold of Rilke, knowing that she needed him as much as he needed her.
I don’t, she said. I have Schiller. I’ll always have him.
He’s not in there, Brick said, both of them dissolving in the dark light of the black hole. There’s nothing in there, it’s empty. Schiller’s gone.
Their eyes met, and he realised that deep down, past the madness, past the exhaustion, she knew the truth.
It doesn’t matter, she said. I’ll find him.
She smiled, her lips bursting into ash. Brick felt his fingers slip as her body fell apart, tried to scoop her up in his hands, to hold her together. As soon as they parted the air between them ignited, the same nuclear detonation as before, blowing him back up the throat of the beast. He rolled like a spinning top, pushed on by a rippling wave of energy. He called Rilke’s name, reaching back for her with his hands, with his mind, trying to pull her along with him.
But it was too late. She was gone.
Cal
The Thermosphere, 4.29 p.m.
He spat fire, and the storm burned.
The beast was coming apart, its body blown to smoke, just its mouth hanging above the ground, still open wide. Even that was losing power, its inward breath nothing more than a whistle. Clumps of half-eaten debris were falling from it, along with flickering strands of dark light. It was almost as if the man in the storm was turning himself inside out.
Adam hung in the air like a dragon, the same unbroken plume of fire roaring from his lips. Howie, too, hurling bolts of magma from his mouth. Each one made the sky shiver. Cal never stopped thinking about Daisy, the sadness and anger fuelling the inferno inside him. He would never stop thinking about her.
That’s very sweet, said a voice, her voice. The shock of it cut off his angel’s burning cry and Cal looked out into the heavens. One of the stars was moving, falling towards earth. It was emanating a sound, and it took him a moment to understand it was laughter.
Daisy? How?!
I don’t know, she said, flickering out of sight before reappearing next to him in a halo of incandescent ash. He stared at her, open-mouthed, and she laughed even harder.
You’ll catch flies if you keep your mouth open like that.
Then she threw herself into his arms, the air between them blistering in protest. He grinned, holding her as tigh
t as he was able. The relief was like a river bursting in his soul.
Use it, she said, pulling loose, looking up at the beast.
What?
That, she said, pointing at his chest. Use it.
He did, laughing out a bolt of fire that lashed up into the fading darkness of the storm. Daisy was doing the same, the sound of her giggles like birdsong. Adam had stopped for breath, and when he saw Daisy he too started to laugh. Not just him, but his angel too. Each burst of sound was a weapon, tearing into the void over their heads.
The man in the storm was trying to burn himself away, but his wings were in tatters. The stumps twitched like an injured crow’s, lightning rippling over the surface. The air was full of movement, a hail of black feathers drifting down. He was no longer making any sound at all, just the pitiful wheeze of a dying thing. A last, desperate breath.
A pearl of white light appeared in the heart of the darkness, hanging there for a moment like a dewdrop. It expanded in a heartbeat, a silent supernova. Cal buried his head in his arm and when he looked again the beast was lost in fire. A lone figure hurtled from the cold inferno, spinning through the air like a burning ragdoll.
Brick, he said. But Daisy was already chasing him, snapping out of existence with a pop, appearing again almost instantly with the other boy in her arms. He was alive, but only just, his angel’s fire stripped away from every part of him except his eyes. He had lost his wings, one gone completely and the other like a scarf of candlelight that hung from his shoulder.
You okay, mate? Cal asked.
Rilke, he said. Cal searched for her in his head, but she was nowhere. He glanced at Daisy, met her eyes, and she knew it too. Rilke was gone, but she’d taken half of the storm with her.
Come on, said Cal. There was barely anything left of him, his mind and body emptied. But there was enough. He flexed his wings, carrying himself up towards the storm. The clouds were dissipating now, like rats deserting a sinking ship. Behind them was a scarecrow of old flesh, his throat an open wound that blazed black light. It was done. It was dead. It was over. Let’s finish this.
The Fury
The Thermosphere, 4.32 p.m.
Cal fought it. He lashed out with every last piece of himself, every dreg of emotion. The angel did what it was supposed to, converting it into energy, into fire, hurling it at the beast. The man in the storm was now neither of those things. Everything about him had been ripped away, leaving just that spinning core, that black orb, like an obsidian marble in the sky. Even this was shrinking, its dark light guttering out. Like the angels it could not survive here on its own, Cal thought. Without its host it was nothing. It pumped out waves of deafening silence, each one like an inverted scream. Cal no longer even felt like his body was his own. He felt clumsy inside it, as if he was operating an unfamiliar machine. It didn’t matter, though. He felt the joy of it blister up his throat and burn from his mouth. None of it mattered any more, because they’d beaten it, they’d won.
Brick fought it, even though he couldn’t hold his own weight. Daisy kept him afloat in the trembling air, her mind like a harness around him. He could barely see, his head a mess of white noise. But he knew what to do, sweeping his arms through the ether, somehow finding the energy to attack what was left of the storm. All he could think about was Rilke. The girl who had killed Lisa, who had tried to kill him; the girl whose brother had been murdered; the girl whose mind he had ruined, whose sanity he had ripped right out of the hole in her head; the girl who had been so sad, so angry, who had refused to talk about it to anyone, not even her own brother – so much like Brick, so much like him. He couldn’t make sense of her, of what had happened, but her rage was now his to use, and he did, screaming the beast into oblivion. This is for you, Rilke, I’m sorry, I hope you find your brother, I really do, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .
Howie fought it, the fire inside him so natural that he wondered if it had always been this way, if he had just woken from a dream of a normal life, a dream of a family by the sea, of friends, of nights on the beach drinking rum. How could any of that have been real? It felt so artificial, something he’d watched on TV. This was the truth – he was a creature of energy who could pull the world apart with just a word. The storm was now a quivering speck of shadow against the brilliant canvas of space. It flickered, poisonous roots of lightning growing from it, fading almost instantly. Howie attacked it, stamping down with his mind as though he was crushing a beetle, again and again and again. The sound of it was like thunder. He never wanted to fall asleep, never wanted to go back to the dream life, to the place where he had no power. And his angel didn’t want it either, he realised, because if it left him then the only place it could go was somewhere dark and cold and timeless. He clung on to it, feeling its freezing fire flare up inside his soul, laughing.
Adam fought it, screaming at it, seeing his mother’s face in the sky, his father’s too. He was so angry with them, he hated them. All these years they’d told him to shut his mouth, to keep quiet, to stop moaning, stop crying. But not any more. ‘I’m talking now!’ he yelled, and his voice was even louder than his mum’s and dad’s when they were shouting, louder even than the man in the storm. It was the loudest thing in the world and it was his. ‘I’m talking and there’s nothing you can do!’ He wouldn’t let them hurt him any more, he wouldn’t put up with it. He never wanted to see them again and he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. He’d live with Daisy, and Cal, and maybe even Brick even though he was always grumpy. He looked at them now, glittering in the sun like Christmas tree ornaments. They were all made of fire, just like him. They were his brothers and his sister, and he loved them so much it made his heart hurt. They shouted at the sky and he did too, all of them together, the way it would always be.
Daisy fought it. It didn’t feel like fighting, though, because all she was doing was laughing. It bubbled up inside her as if it had been buried for a million years, finally set free. She couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to. Each giggle was a golden flame that swept from her mouth, reminding her of breaths on a cold day. They rose up to the man in the storm, landing on his nasty, old skin, smothering him. Not that there was much left anyway, just a circle of darkness, a giant hole punched in the sky. It was getting smaller and paler, the universe healing. She opened her wings and flew to it, still laughing at the relief of it. Her angel laughed too, the hum of a tuning fork, making every cell in her body feel lighter than air. The storm shrank away from her, and she almost felt sorry for it because it could never know what she was feeling. The beast – although it wasn’t really a beast, it wasn’t really alive like an animal or a person – roamed through the cold, dark, emptiness of space looking for life, because it couldn’t stand it. All it knew was nothing, absence. To it, this world was wrong, a horrible blip in the rules, something that couldn’t be tolerated, that had to be rebalanced, set right. But it hadn’t counted on the angels, hadn’t counted on the people either. And it certainly hadn’t counted on laughter. If there was an exact opposite to emptiness, to that infinite nothing it loved so much, it had to be laughter, didn’t it? There was nothing more human. She fought it, reaching out, the storm now a speck of dust that she could trap between two fingers, then smaller than the little atoms that made up the air, then so small that even her angel’s eyes could no longer make it out, tiny enough to fall between the cracks in the world. A single spark of black lightning flickered across the sky, then she felt it end, everything that it was erupting from it in a rippling explosion. The shockwave knocked her back and she burned herself out of time and space, taking the others with her, riding the sound of their laughter all the way home.
Evening
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
William Shakespeare, King Lear
Cal
H
emmingway, 4.47 p.m.
At first he wasn’t sure where they were. Then the world caught up, wrapping its fist around them, and through the swirling halo of embers he recognised it. To his right was the sea, still unsettled even after all this time. To his left was a car park, and a little squat building with its doors boarded up. Ashes still coated the ground – fewer now, but enough for him to see the footprints there, the tyre tracks too, from when they’d left that morning. It all looked different through the eyes of his angel, but when he reached into his head to try and turn off the fire nothing happened.
Is it over? The voice was Brick’s, and Cal looked round to see him lying on the ground, propped up against the dune. His fire still burned too, although weakly, and the boy shuffled uncomfortably in it. His big, bright eyes blinked.
Better be, said Howie, floating above the ground beside the toilet block, his wings half folded. I am proper knackered.
It is, I think, said Daisy. She and Adam stood side by side, their angels humming loud enough to lift the sand and ash in a dance around them. There was another noise coming from her, a crystal chime that made Cal’s head feel weird. The man in the storm is dead.
You sure? Brick asked. Daisy cocked her head, as if she was listening for something. After a moment or two she nodded.
I’m sure. Can’t you feel it? He’s gone.
Cal could feel it, the sensation like he’d eaten something bad, something that had made him feel sick for days and days, and he’d finally puked it up. He wondered if his angel was relieved too, because it felt different up there. It was as if Cal was a hitchhiker inside his own skull, pushed to one side by the chill of the creature. He couldn’t work out if the sensation was the result of an injury, something that had happened during the battle, but when he patted his head, his body, nothing seemed to be missing.