Читать книгу Fury - Rebecca Lim - Страница 7

‘Once,’ I say, struggling to keep my voice calm as the sweeping, searching light recurs, and recurs again, ‘there were upwards of a thousand elohim. Some created male, some female. Eight were made most powerful, most prescient, of all things that dwell in the universe: His regents. His princes. Tasked to discern His will.’

Their names rise like smoke in the icy air. ‘Barachiel,’ I murmur, ‘Selaphiel, Jeremiel, Jegudiel, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael …’

A look of shock appears on Ryan’s face. ‘Mercy, those are the names of archangels. Beings that people actually … worship.’

‘And they were my friends,’ I whisper, ‘like my brothers. The name of God is woven into the very fabric of their beings, their names, as it is in mine, if only I could remember it, but something was done to me to make me forget, do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?’

There’s baffled wonderment on Ryan’s face. For a moment, I get a torrent of feeling from him, denial the strongest thread.

‘And these eight, uh, archangels …?’ he says hesitantly.

‘Were the ones who kept me “safe”, who placed me inside a woman called Ezra, into another called Lucy, a girl called Susannah, then Carmen, Lela, Irina; and, before them all, an unbroken chain of human lives I can no longer recall …’

Ryan frowns. ‘Kept you safe from what?’

I pretend not to hear. ‘Our people are further divided into malakhim — the messengers, who are sometimes seen to intercede with the living here on earth; and seraphim, ophanim, dominions, powers, others. There are many … “castes”, for want of a better word, but the elohim are highest of all.’

Ryan rolls his eyes. ‘Castes? You’ve just described Paradise High. And, I guess, I used to be one of the elohim, too. Before I fell. So snap! Some pair we make.’

I return his grin with a startled smile of my own, but then my voice grows sombre again. ‘There are three classes of being under God: bestial, human, angelic. And one thing is known and understood by us all: never shall they intermix, or evil is the result. I know it as if it is written on my soul in letters of fire.’

‘Evil?’ Ryan leaps on the word. I feel his sudden tension in the arm lying across my shoulders.

‘When the Daughters of Man began to multiply upon the earth,’ I explain, unsure of how I gained such knowledge, where the words arise from, ‘some of our people lay with them, begetting a race called the nephilim. Some say they are murderous giants, some say devouring spirits.’

‘Fairy tales,’ Ryan scoffs.

My eyes sharpen upon his. ‘The way the Devil and his demons are?’

‘What we are isn’t evil,’ he insists.

‘I don’t know what we are,’ I reply. ‘And I’m not saying I agree. I’m just giving you an idea of the … baggage that I come with.’

Two supernatural factions wrestling for control of my soul across the centuries, reduced to this one word: baggage.

Ryan’s answering look is wry.

I recall Irina’s roomful of bespoke luggage and give a short laugh. ‘I’m just telling you that this is how we’re … wired. So if you don’t think I come with the biggest damn warning sign you’ve ever seen, you aren’t really looking at me properly. Why aren’t you afraid of what I represent? Why aren’t you already running?’

Ryan looks down. ‘You know the answer to that. Don’t make it any harder for me than it already is. And I’m not saying that the, uh, nephilim were a good thing. But the fact that they, uh, might exist,’ his face is sceptical, ‘shows that some of your people broke “the law” in the past, right? By mixing with us lower life forms. You might say you’re programmed one way, but I see you questioning things all the time. Everything you’ve done since I’ve known you has been a process of trying to break free; to override what was done to you by eight of the most powerful beings in existence.’

I stiffen at his words, recognising both truth and heresy in them. It’s true that I no longer comprehend the ways of my own kind; that, in some way, for better or worse, I’ve … evolved. After all this time, I may be more human than not. Don’t I feel pain, fear, grief, sorrow, when I was created to feel none of these things?

‘Were they all there? The Eight?’ Ryan asks, catching me by surprise. ‘At the Galleria?’

I shake my head. In my mind’s eye, I relive the instant Luc cut K’el down and pain explodes through me again. I rock forward, crossing my arms tightly to hold in the hurt.

‘K’el’s last act in life was to protect me,’ I gasp. ‘Even though I never loved him enough to deserve such sacrifice.’

‘K’el?’ Ryan seizes on the unfamiliar name, his grip tightening. I know what he remembers: a gleaming giant, tawny-haired, unyielding, honourable, bitter, with eyes like a young lion, who stood between me and Luc.

‘Raphael was supposed to be there, too,’ I whisper. ‘But he never made it. Nor did Jegudiel. And Selaphiel’s been … missing for a while now.’

‘Missing?’ Ryan queries sharply.

I hear his frustration as he struggles to piece together the little I’ve seen fit to offer.

‘Taken,’ I clarify bleakly. ‘All three of them, by Luc’s forces. K’el was just a stand-in; he was out of his depth, and his reward was an unjust death. He was singular and perfect, Ryan. And he will never be made again. I think that’s all I want to “trade”. You don’t need to know the rest.’

Ryan grips me by the upper arms, turning me to face him with a hard shake. ‘Why can’t you trust me?’ he growls. ‘Don’t underestimate me. Don’t treat me like I’m something less than you are — I don’t deserve that. Who is he, Mercy? The one who was threatening you? He’s the reason K’el’s dead, the real reason Raphael and the others are missing, right? The reason the Eight have had to hide you for so long, inside so many people? I’m not as stupid as I must seem to you.’

I begin to tremble as if I’m in the grip of a killing fever. Don’t make me tell you, Ryan. Please.

‘Who is he?’ Ryan insists. ‘That … archangel,’ he stumbles over the word, ‘who looks just like me? If he isn’t one of the Eight, then who is he?’

Trust Ryan to cut to the heart of it, of me.

He gives me another shake. ‘He was hurting you and I tried to kill him. Kill him!’

I hear his disbelief. He is wide-eyed now at the memory. I know that he’s seeing what I’m seeing: Luc suspended sixty feet in the air, arms outspread, flames enveloping his living form, laughing wildly.

‘He was on fire,’ Ryan shudders, ‘but he wouldn’t die. And I wanted him to die because he was trying to hurt you. Tell me who he is!’

I look at Ryan again, really study him. For an instant, I see eyes as pale as broken water, as living ice, in place of his brown ones; golden hair where his is dark; golden skin where his is so pale. He could be Luc in disguise. Save mortal and vulnerable in a way Luc has never been and never will be. Could Ryan represent some kind of warning? I was never good at reading signs and portents, having fallen to earth before I could work out, for myself, who I was and what my purpose could even be.

‘Who is he?’ Ryan’s voice is raw. ‘He’s no archangel,’ I murmur. ‘Not any more. I’ve always called him Luc,’ I add reluctantly, ‘but you would know him as Lucifer, Ryan.’

I see Ryan blanch as understanding finally dawns: that he is a dead ringer for the Devil Incarnate.

As if to underscore my words, a soul-rending scream pierces the storm-tossed night. It reverberates in the silence that has fallen over Ryan, over me, deep inside our stone citadel.

Both of us flinch as another scream sounds, closer this time, and louder. For a moment, a bright, constant light pierces the narrow window set deep into the walls above our landing, and we stare up at it, frozen with fear, before it suddenly extinguishes.

Ryan lets go of me abruptly, leans back against the wall.

I pull my knees up under my chin, tightening my arms around myself defensively. ‘So you see how this is hopeless, you and me?’

In answer, Ryan just closes his eyes and tilts his head back, as if he can’t bear the sight of me.

I never babble, I’m no good at small talk, but I rush to fill the silence with the oldest story there is. About a girl seeing a guy through a crowd for the first time, and falling in love.

‘It was like a sickness,’ I mutter. ‘We were young, capable of things your people would deem impossible. We were … obsessed with each other, with what we could do. We thought we were outside the order of things. That rules were only there to be broken. We sneered at the others — believing they didn’t possess our depth of understanding about the way things could be. The whole universe was our playground, and Luc loved to walk in your world. He’d return with stories of some strange, rare place he knew as “Eden”. The greatest irony is that he should be trapped here for an age, growing in vengefulness and spite and pure evil because of me …’

Can Ryan hear my unspoken plea?

I did nothing but fall for the wrong person, Ryan. I picked Luc, when I should have picked Raphael, even K’el. But then I never would have met you …

Even then, Luc had been trouble. He’d been wild. We’d been created to govern. We were responsibility and duty and faith and principle made flesh, made real. But Luc had taken all the power bound inside him, all the unspoken covenants laid down between us and our creator — the covenants hard coded into the very matter of which we were made, thou shalt, thou shalt not — and he’d used them for his own … sport.

It had been exhilarating, and frightening, being with him. Almost from the first, Luc had behaved like a god himself: creating, destroying, twisting the animate and inanimate world around him into anything he desired simply because he could. He was different from us all and somehow … free. And more beautiful than the sun.

And I fell for that. Who wouldn’t have?

Maybe I hadn’t transgressed the way Luc did, but I never tried to rein him in. I was implicated, a witness; at the very least, I turned a blind eye, when I must have known he’d never be satisfied with things the way they stood.

I tell Ryan all of this and he doesn’t say anything, or open his eyes.

‘I had it wrong for the longest time,’ I finish softly. ‘It was never the Eight who cast me out of home, cut me off from everything I’d ever loved, everyone I’d ever known. It was Luc all along. The Eight did the best they could to keep me alive down here, but they couldn’t stop Luc filling my sleeping mind with longing and lies. Some fatal bargain was struck between Luc and Michael, all those years ago. But Luc gave it a special twist, all of his own making, like he’s always done. He was the one who exiled me and it almost killed me. But he didn’t count on me surviving. And he didn’t count on being cast down himself, by Michael. And because of a rash vow that Luc once made me, he’s been trapped here on earth.’

I close my eyes in horror, whispering, ‘Luc craves a monstrous empire. And I am the key, the touchstone. What he wants won’t be possible until he has me back under his control. He will never stop pursuing me.’

Ryan still hasn’t moved. ‘And are you still … obsessed with him?’ he says finally, without opening his eyes.

His voice is emotionless, steeled against more hurt. ‘Yes,’ I whisper over the hurricane inside. ‘More than ever.’

Ryan swallows and opens his eyes and I see them shimmer with an unspoken devastation before he abruptly looks down at his clenched hands.

I watch the skin of his face tighten in rejection as I say, ‘I am consumed — with thoughts of destroying Luc the way he destroyed K’el, the way he’s been responsible for destroying and defiling more of your kind than you could begin to number, the way he tried to destroy me. He robbed me of time, Ryan, of choice, the two things I consider as precious as life itself. He raised his hand against me when all I ever did was love him beyond reason.’

Ryan raises his head as my words sink in. I hold up my aching left hand, which I’ve been concealing from his gaze, and the living flames rise off my skin as if they reach for him. He gasps, recoiling.

‘I’m sick of being objectified by those who are supposed to “love” me,’ I say fiercely. ‘I’ve been a game piece for far too long. I want vengeance, Ryan. I want to rain down upon my enemies like a ruinous plague. But most of all? I’m ready to be loved, just for myself, no other reason. And I don’t think you’re strong enough to be with someone like me. No one is, not now.’

Ryan’s continuing silence tells me everything I need to know. I feel such a sudden weight of sadness that, for a moment, the screaming, spinning world beneath my skin grows still. Abruptly, my burning scar extinguishes all together, ceases to ache.

Who could love me the way I am? Nameless, stateless, flawed.

‘I have no name,’ I say, my voice bleak. ‘And there is a legion after me who would reduce you to blood. For what it’s worth,’ I whisper, ‘I feel it, too. Felt it, almost from the moment I met you. When we’re together, I feel so much less … alone. And I would like nothing better than to lose myself in the human world with you, but that’s a dream, Ryan. And I’m done dreaming. I’m awake now. Now and forever. And where I’m going, you cannot follow.’

A demonic shriek shatters the night, so close beside us that I surge upright in fear, only to have the entire world tilt through its axis as I struggle to retain my balance.

Ryan is on his feet immediately, steadying me.

He’s so tall, taller than me, built like a line-backing angel.

I’m still Irina’s height, still mortal-sized. I can’t seem to find the energy, or the will, to dominate the space I occupy, to reclaim my true nature. There doesn’t seem any point. I’m no “better” than he is. Not any more.

I struggle in Ryan’s arms, but he won’t let me push him away. Maybe I imagine it but, for a second, it seems as if my outline ripples, like Ryan’s clasping a creature made of fog, I can see the ground below my bare feet, through them.

‘Don’t you dare!’ Ryan cries, his grip momentarily tightening on emptiness as I struggle to draw myself together. ‘Don’t you dare disappear on me again. I know what we have is impossible to rationalise, but once I met you, my old life was over anyway. I was dead inside. All that stuff, that Ryan, they were already gone, already past. Only this matters. Don’t leave me.’

I want to lean into him and draw upon his solidity, his indescribable, peculiar energy that I could pick out in a crowd, anywhere, but I’m falling again, falling.

I’m caving in, I’m vertigo.

‘All that exists,’ I gasp, as if saying the words will somehow protect me, ‘is this present.’

It’s something I told myself when I was Irina and believed that Luc was dead, and I’d never see Ryan again. Maybe it’s the only thing capable of being true in a world like this one; that the moment we inhabit, is all we can ever really be sure of.

‘That’s it, that’s it exactly!’ he pleads. ‘All I want from you is more time.’

The laugh that escapes me has the quality of hysteria. ‘We need to carve something out for us,’ Ryan exclaims. ‘The big guy with the big sword said so himself. He ordered me to take care of you in the human world, which tells me that your time on earth is nowhere near over. And he thinks I can help. Somehow.’

The screwed up look on Ryan’s face is almost comical and it hits me that he’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever known. Then the world begins to spin in earnest and I feel his hold on me slip again.

‘We take this moment, this now, and we draw it out, we turn it into a chain of time that will keep us together,’ Ryan insists.

When I reply, my voice is almost inaudible. ‘The “big guy with the big sword” is the Archangel Michael, and he overestimates his jurisdiction where I’m concerned. I’ve been taking care of myself in the human world for a very long time without recourse to anyone. Every time They put me into someone new? It all came down to me: me doing the starting over, me making things up as I went along. Being with me will only get you killed. I can’t be responsible for losing you, the way I almost lost you tonight.’

The sense of vertigo is so bad now that Ryan seems fuzzy, as if I’m seeing him through a veil of light.

‘You’re already responsible,’ Ryan implores. ‘I’m a marked man. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me. With you, or without you, I’m marked for death. And I’ll take my chances with you. In any life, given the same choice, I would choose you. Are you hearing me?’

Ryan could be a being of fire, light is scattering off his skin. I reach out and touch his face with my fingers, feeling the energy spike beneath the surface of him, his iron self-control wavering. So much passion in him, so much life, all for me.

‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ I whisper through the pain sweeping through me. ‘And it won’t work. This isn’t a game, Ryan. Run, or die. Those are the choices. Am I worth that much to you?’

‘I’ve got your back,’ Ryan vows fervently, ‘if you’ve got mine. You know it.’

He wraps his arms around me as if he would bind my energy to him. And the bright glow that my skin gives off seems to bleed into him, or draw tight around him, so he glows brighter to my dazzled eyes. It’s as if we are bound together by light. Light is refracting off us onto the walls, the worn handrails, the uneven stone stairs, like some kind of chemical reaction is happening.

Ryan’s breath is warm upon my face. ‘Now, are you done throwing out challenges?’ he asks. ‘Maybe I lied a little when I said that all I wanted was your time, because I’m greedy for whatever you can give me. I’ll steal what I can. Because there’s something I’ve had to wait more than one lifetime to do, and I’m not waiting any more …’

Before I can divine his intention, shore up my defences, Ryan tips my face up to his, curving me into the hard line of his body, lowering his lips swiftly to mine.

My eyes fly wide then shiver closed.

I am love, and desire, and fear.

I’m suffused with a roaring heat.

Those things are inside Ryan, too, surging beneath his skin.

We are two disparate energies colliding and the light around us, in us, through us, seems to build and build.

So potent a mix are we that the mere act of being, of holding myself together, becomes untenable and I shatter into a billion pieces, into ragged motes of light, like an exploding star, instantly dispersing.

Ryan is buffeted by a blast wave of heat and energy, it ruffles his dark hair, his clothing, and he’s left to grasp the empty air, howling just one word, ‘Mercy!’

Thinking me already fled, gone, departed, as I have done so many times before.

I am the hurricane that was promised.

I am boundless.

There’s nothing to stop me penetrating these stone walls and go slipstreaming into the night.

I am insubstantial, yet indivisible.

I feel inviolate, all-powerful.

It is as it should be. It is as it was.

But something holds me here. It’s like an itch, a small and nagging cut dragging at my attention.

I know it. I can almost taste it: some messy human emotion I should put behind me forever, but cannot now ignore.

It’s grief, Ryan’s grief radiating into the icy air.

To every action, a reaction; it’s something my people dismiss. We look down on all those below us and think that our actions, our inactions, have no consequence.

But mortals live in a storm of consequence, and Ryan has been hurt enough for one lifetime.

Somehow, that thought draws me back.

I am clumsy and unpractised, and my whole being yearns to be and remain weightless light, but still I pull my fractured energy together like a swarm of angry bees. I force myself to become a perfect simulacrum of a human being once more: fleshy, dense, solid.

Then I’m facing him again, and Ryan’s eyes are still wide with horror and sorrow. He’s close enough to touch, but neither of us makes a move towards the other. Now he knows what I have known all along: that touching is dangerous. It invites the unwanted.

I see suddenly, blindingly, how love and loss are two sides of the same coin. To know one is to know the other, even before it has come to pass.

Ryan pushes his hair out of his eyes. ‘I thought you were … gone.’ His voice cracks on the word. ‘This time for good. It’s never going to be easy for us, is it?’

I shake my head.

‘You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it that I want what you want? I’ve spent an eternity feeling powerless. Love did that to me — robbed me of all control. I never expected to feel this way again. I don’t want to feel.’

‘Neither did I,’ Ryan rasps, ‘because feeling anything at all was dangerous. If I let myself feel, then maybe I’d have to believe what everyone was saying — that Lauren was dead. But from the moment I laid eyes on “Carmen”, you kept getting under my skin. At first, all you did was irritate the hell out of me, bailing me up that way outside my house, inviting yourself along for the ride when all I wanted was to be left alone. But that irritation turned into curiosity, which turned into something else, becoming this chain of, of … feeling that brought me here. I dropped everything for you. I veered left. And I’d do it again in a second. That’s what “feeling” does. It tells you you’re alive, it gives things … I don’t know, proper meaning. You’re still trying to maintain some veneer of independence? Toughness? Do words like that even apply to you? But I see through it, Mercy. I see through you. You’re not that different from me after all, under your armour. Crumbs, Mercy, that’s all I’m after. Just crumbs. It’s not a lot to ask for.’

Ryan steps forward and tries to catch hold of me again and it’s reflex what I do next.

I slam up a force-field between us, a seamless web of energy the way K’el reminded me was possible. And Ryan hits it with just his outstretched fingers. A crackle of intense, blue-white light is thrown up at the point of contact and he rocks back on his heels, cradling his stinging fingertips in his other hand.

He stares at me, wounded, before laughing ruefully. ‘No sudden moves from now on, I promise, if you promise me something back.’

‘What?’ I say warily. ‘I suck at keeping promises, remember?’

‘Just promise,’ he says, ‘that you’ll take me with you this time. You won’t just fade out and leave me behind again. Just let me be with you, just stay for a while, that’s all I’m asking.’

It hits me once more, that he’s the sweetest thing. But I don’t move any closer, though I want him more than anything.

What I want is impossible. And Ryan’s given me the answer to this mess, the only answer that makes any sense.

The thought of what I’m about to say fills me with an ache so powerful that a terrible sense of dissolution returns.

‘You might not need me,’ he insists hotly. ‘You might not want me, but you’ve got me.’

That force-field, that protective shell I’ve cast about myself, I let it drop. I hold my right hand out to Ryan, and both of us can see that it’s shaking.

Hesitantly, he takes my fingers, then grips them tight, as if he will never let me go. I have to tune out everything I can feel beneath his skin, everything about him that unsettles every particle of my being, in order to speak.

‘It’s the one thing I can’t do, Ryan: stay.’

He shakes his head violently and I whisper, ‘Hear me out, please.

‘I never took Luc’s side in his rebellion against God. I was exiled before I could be forced to choose. So now — call it luck, call it chance, call it accident, because I will never call it fate — I remain elohim. Not demon. I still have a choice. And there’s a way to keep Luc in Hell forever; a way that will mean placing duty before desire the way the Eight always have, and always will. I have to leave, don’t you see? It’s something that part of me yearns for. I’ve been stumbling towards the light for the longest time, and now? I might actually return. I might actually be able to go home. If Luc can’t find me, he’ll always be contained here.’

Ryan releases me, shocked. ‘You’d just abandon us to him? Aren’t we worth saving?’

Such a tiny word, us, conveying so many things. ‘But Luc would be trapped forever,’ I say pleadingly. ‘He’d never be able to leave, never be able to turn everything beyond your world —’

‘Into a wasteland,’ Ryan says fiercely, ‘the way he’d do here if he ever discovered you were gone.’

‘This place is already a wasteland,’ I murmur. ‘One law for the lion and the ox is oppression. That’s just the way it is. How things were laid down.’

The words slip out before I realise I’ve uttered them.

Ryan reels back from me as if I’ve punched him in the throat.

‘So just go,’ he chokes. ‘Throw us to the lions, or whatever. Save yourself, your home. Just forget I laid myself on the line. Forget I spoke, that I pleaded with you on behalf of my entire species.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I say quietly.

‘Oh, I understand very well,’ he replies. ‘The greatest good for the greatest number, right? They hammered that one home in sociology one year. We humans are … what, just one rung above the animals? But when Luc takes out his vengeance on all of us because you slipped through his fingers, just remember what you sacrificed, Mercy, because it will all be your doing. Having more than a little personal experience of sacrifice, I’m guessing you won’t want that on your conscience. It’s a coward’s way out. And you’re no coward,’ he spits. ‘Or do I have that wrong?’

Every word hits me like a blow, and I’m hardly surprised when we are rocked by another blast wave of heat and energy that knocks us both off our feet.

Sprawled where I am on the ground, I only have enough time to raise my head before the Archangel Nuriel steps out of a vortex that seems to have opened upon the stairs just above us.

She’s so beautiful.

Her long, dark, wavy hair snakes out around her shoulders as if she’s a living Medusa. Her dark eyes are wide and unseeing, and she seems made of lightning; so bright in outline I can barely discern her form, the sleeveless garment she wears. She’s weaponless, and there’s an expression on her face that looks almost … vulnerable. All of the joy I’ve always associated with her, is missing.

Ryan’s face is tilted up towards her, enraptured, and I know the same look is upon my face.

‘Soror,’ Nuriel pleads. ‘Salva me.’

Sister, she’s saying. Save me.

Though I kneel up and reach out to her, she does not meet my eyes as she drifts, weightless, above the stone. And I realise that this is a vision of some kind. She’s a projection, she’s not really here. Luc showed me that such a thing could be possible.

I rise and approach the vision cautiously, passing my fingers through the edges of Nuriel’s constantly shifting, fraying outline. I feel nothing. She could be a hologram.

‘Festina,’ the vision whispers, ‘ne delear ut K’el deletus est.’ Come quickly. Or I will be destroyed, as K’el was destroyed.

I close my eyes briefly in renewed horror at the mention of K’el’s name.

‘What is she saying?’ Ryan says, getting up cautiously.

But I’m torn by the memory of Nuriel siding with Michael, with all the others, against me. And I do not reply.

‘Salva me, soror.’ Nuriel’s voice is eerie and emotionless. ‘Salva me.’

Then there’s a jump-cut moment — like a break in transmission — where I imagine for a moment that Nuriel’s outline wavers, rippling outwards. Then she winks out of being, leaving Ryan and me circling the space between us warily.

‘You could hear her,’ I say bluntly. ‘See her.’

Ryan nods, still puzzled. ‘But she could have been speaking backwards. What did she say?’

‘She was speaking in Latin. She wants me to save her.’

Ryan’s face is, instantly, transparent with hope. ‘So you’ll stay long enough to free her?’

‘It’s a trap, Ryan,’ I say flatly, and his face falls. ‘The last time I “saw” Nuriel, Luc was chasing her down, above the waters of Lake Como. Luc’s got her, I heard him say it. This vision is an elaborate kind of bait. Some measure of coercion was used. Torture.’

‘But she’s a friend of yours, right?’ Ryan’s voice is almost pleading. ‘And she’s in trouble?’

‘Yes,’ I say tightly, realising where this is heading.

Ryan challenges me with his eyes. ‘So do it — if not for me, then for her. Stick it to Luc one last time. Defy him. I know you want to. If you’re not going to hang around to defend us, at least leave us someone who can.’

I’m stung by his words. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a set-up! You don’t “get” what we are, what we’re about. We’re not in it for you. Anyway, Luc’s not going to just let me walk in and take her. Even if I did decide to help her, I forbid you from going anywhere with me, so don’t even think about it, it’s non-negotiable.’

‘So you’ll do it?’ Ryan says eagerly.

‘I didn’t say that,’ I growl. ‘I’m still thinking about it. You could die.’

In that string of non sequiturs is all my unspoken fear for him.

‘It wouldn’t matter what you said,’ Ryan argues. ‘I’d just follow you anyway. You can’t stop me. I’ve had years of practice. You picked the wrong guy to mess with.’

‘You have no idea what I’m capable of!’ Worry sharpens my voice to a keen edge. ‘And don’t be ridiculous, you wouldn’t know where to go. You couldn’t do what I do, you’d never find me.’

‘I’d just follow the trail of destruction,’ Ryan says triumphantly. ‘You’ve made a mess of things so far, all of you. It’d be a piece of cake. I’d just follow the trail of burning buildings.’

Or burning humans. I recall, with horror, those images of a fiery, melting world that Gia Basso and I had watched, side by side.

‘Luc would squash you like a bug,’ I growl to hide my fear. ‘You’d be completely unprotected, trailing around after me with demons on the loose.’

‘So let me go with you then,’ Ryan says guilelessly. ‘I could stand behind you when things get nasty.’ He grins. ‘Got no problem with that.’

‘The sensible option would be to leave and never come back. Right now. You know it.’

‘But where would the fun be in that?’ he murmurs. ‘And we’re both due a little fun.’

‘Fun?’ My reply is incredulous. ‘Walking into an obvious trap set by a bunch of first-order demons isn’t defiance, it’s not even fun. It’s just stupid.’

‘But we’re a stupid and obstinate species.’ Ryan grins wider at my expression. ‘Argumentative. Tenacious. Just go for it. You’ve got to love that about us.’

‘It’s not “love” I’m feeling right now! You could die,’ I say again.

‘But I’d be less likely to die if I was with you,’ Ryan wheedles. ‘Because you’d do everything in your power to keep me alive. I know you would.’

‘You’d just get in my way,’ I bluster. ‘The way you got in mine?’ he shoots back. ‘And see what happened? You found Lauren. You saved her life. Good things happen when we’re together.’

He moves forward, taking my hands in his. ‘So you’ll let me turn the tables on you? Let me tag along this time? One last joint mission before you leave me forever?’

I stare up into his face, troubled, seeing demon fire that resists water; that turns flesh to an ash so fine it can be borne away on the wind.

‘With one condition,’ I murmur. ‘If we do this, if we try to go after Nuriel together — you’re free to leave at any time. You don’t have to stay to see how it pans out. You have my permission to run when you feel like running. I won’t hold you to anything.’

‘Free to bail,’ Ryan agrees solemnly. ‘No strings.’

Though there are. We can feel the ties that bind us together, even if we can’t see them. Our words are at once empty of meaning, and brimming with it.

He folds his arms around me and places his lips against my forehead, tentatively, half-expecting me to scatter into a formless cloud of light, before looking down into my eyes with a crooked grin.

‘You know I’ll just keep chipping away at those defences,’ he murmurs, ‘working up your tolerance levels, taking you outside your comfort zone. Consider yourself forewarned.’

He feels me shiver in answer, and gives a low and sexy laugh. Is about to say more, maybe even kiss me again, when the night is shattered by a chorus of nightmare: a score of voices shrieking wordlessly, converging from many directions at once, speaking no language ever devised by the elohim.

Ryan and I clutch each other in mounting horror as light begins to punch through the windows of the tower in a staccato, scattergun motion. Searing light, with a sickly grey tinge at its heart, like a cancer. Demonlight. Time seems to speed up and slow down all at once as the metal window frames ripple and flex, then fly inwards, propelled by some unimaginable force, their glass exploding a second later, shredded into a powder so fine it fills the atmosphere.