Fury

Lela’s fine bones, elegant wrists and ankles. But I have Irina’s heart-shaped face and long, tapered fingers, her long limbs and her height, because I would miss seeing the world from her vantage point, miss being able to place my head on Ryan’s shoulder without having to strain to do it.

But there’s something of my own strong build and features in this new persona I’ve created: an in-joke for an audience of one. Irina looked breakable, which is something I will never, ever be, or permit myself to seem.

I could pass as a citizen of almost anywhere; I’m both anonymous and unique, interesting to gaze on, but just shy of true beauty. I’m a deliberate collection of quirks.

‘Who the hell are you supposed to be?’ Ryan says, staring into my face.

‘Close your mouth,’ I tell him, laughing softly. ‘What do you think?’

I do a little twirl on the spot, resting my hand high upon the curve of my left hip, the way Irina would.

I’m wearing ordinary-looking clothes: a black, hooded goose-down jacket over a heavy, black, rollneck sweater, skinny, dark grey jeans and soft, sand-coloured, flat-soled boots that end just below the knee. They’re all fake, of course, all props, shifted out of the very energy of which I’m made. Here because I need them.

Ryan blinks several times as he studies me. ‘This isn’t funny — I don’t know you like this,’ he says finally.

I frown as I drift slowly up the stairs towards him. ‘Look closer. You recognised me inside Carmen, inside Lela, in Irina, when you shouldn’t have been able to. I’m the same person I always was. It’s just a shell. I’m still here,’ I insist. ‘You know me.’

I sit down beside him, but he shifts away, as if horrified by what I’ve done.

‘What else are you people capable of?’ he breathes. ‘Every time I think I’ve come to terms with what you are, what you can do, you freak me out all over again. I just got you back, damn it! I just got you back and you go and do this.’

‘They won’t be looking for someone wearing this face or form,’ I say sharply. ‘It’ll keep us alive.’

Ryan’s eyes flash. ‘That may be. But you’re still glowing. They’re gonna see that, right? If you could, uh, dial down the whole shining thing, well then, maybe it would work.’ He flicks the fingers of one hand at the gleaming surface of my skin.

I freeze, astonished that I could have forgotten such a fundamental detail.

‘What would I do without you?’ I murmur, staring down at my luminous hands.

When I was Carmen, I’d only ever glowed very faintly in the dark, when there were no other sources of light around. In the daylight, I’d looked like everyone else. But I can’t afford to do even that now — glow in the dark — not when the stakes are so high and any tiny slip up could get us killed. Ryan’s right: I need to ‘dial down the whole shining thing’ altogether. But can I do it?

I bend my will inwards, the way I’ve relearnt to do, imagine locking the light away inside me, the way my soul was anchored deep inside the human vessels the Eight procured for me over centuries. Ryan gasps as the glow that surrounds me begins to dull and fade until I’m indistinguishable from the darkness inside the tower. I hold the light cupped inside, buried so far down that only I could know it’s there.

‘What do you think?’ I ask again softly, my voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. ‘Dialled down enough for you?’

Ryan is silent for a long time. His eyes appear blind as they struggle to pinpoint me. I realise suddenly that he can’t see me at all.

I can feel his apprehension. He thinks I’ll leave him behind, because he’s useless. But he’s so wrong. He’s my reality check, my secret weapon, the only real reason I’m still holding myself together. Everything I value in life is right here beside me, close enough to touch.

‘I’m lucky to have you,’ I say fervently, and I mean it.

Ryan replies flatly out of the darkness, ‘I don’t see how. I can’t do what you do. I lost everything at the Galleria — I left my duffle bag with the coat-check girl, dropped my pack, which had a tonne of things in it, useful things. All I have is my phone, my wallet, passport, a folded-up picture of you that looks nothing like you, not any more. I’m bringing exactly zip to this little “mission” of ours. I can’t do any … magic,’ he ends falteringly, ‘not your kind, anyway. I’ll just hold you up. Get you killed.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Ryan,’ I whisper, reaching out and taking his hand unerringly in the darkness. ‘Right now, I couldn’t do this “magic” without you, and that’s the truth.’

He gives my hand an answering squeeze, and I feel his relief.

‘So you’ve still got my back?’ I remind him sternly of his words.

‘Always,’ he replies without hesitation. ‘Even when I can’t see a damned thing.’

I laugh and pull him to his feet, and he’s suddenly take charge, like the Ryan I remember from Paradise.

‘We need to get our bearings,’ he says, gripping me tightly, not letting me withdraw. ‘Work out how we’re supposed to get out of here without attracting any attention. But this place won’t open for hours. So, first, I want to see how far we’ve come, where we crash-landed.’

‘You crash-landed,’ I say sheepishly, turning him in the direction of the roof.

Ryan’s usually possessed of a natural, athlete’s grace; strength in every sense of the word. But the darkness has robbed him of any certainty and he stumbles as we begin to climb up the winding, uneven staircase in the dark. Even our linked fingers, my own unfaltering eyesight, can’t make him see where the handholds, steps and landings begin and end. In the light, the staircase defies logic. In the dark, to human eyes, it’s an impossibility.

‘We need to get back to the lakeside town I saw in my dream,’ I say over the laboured sound of Ryan’s breathing, the scuff of his boot heels on the stone. ‘I think I know where she is; there was a villa there, a large estate, with a smaller outbuilding of some kind, and a pier, on the water. I can still see it all in my head. We’ll work our way from there, okay?’

The plan sounds better than it is. Ryan can’t know that, at this point, there are way more holes than plan. What town? What villa? Where do I even begin to locate them when all I have are visual cues I picked up in a dream in the dead of night?

I’m pounded by another sudden wave of dizziness, and am so shaken, overwhelmed and nauseated that I think I will pass out. I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid of the task ahead, and it makes me miss a step.

Even sightless as he is, Ryan catches me before I fall, his strong hands grasping me around the waist unerringly.

He turns me to him clumsily. ‘Forget what I said before,’ he breathes, feeling for the contours of my face. ‘Glow or no glow, whatever you look like, you’re still beautiful, and I’d know you anywhere.’

In the dark, Ryan can’t see me searching his face. He can’t see in my eyes all the fear I feel for him. Before I can change my mind, I reach up and pull his head down to me, kiss him lightly, lingeringly, upon the lips, before drawing back.

I ignore the lick of fire that thrills through me like live current that seems to whisper: Forbidden.

It’s just a kiss, I tell myself fiercely. I must have done so much worse, in my time.

Beneath my hands, Ryan is shocked into stillness.

What I feel for him is so different from what I felt for Luc. Loss, sorrow, regret: these things are already built into every word we utter, every glance we share, accompanying us moment by moment, like spectres at a feast. They only serve to heighten the complex, hard-won love that has somehow flowered between us. People say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But I do know. What we have is precious and rare, and so utterly terrifying.

I can tell that Ryan hadn’t really expected me to kiss him again. Not after what happened the last time. He’d actually meant what he’d said about crumbs being enough. He’d been teasing me when he talked of tolerance levels and comfort zones.

His love is so humbling that I’m suddenly glad he can’t see me.

‘Maybe that’s the secret to working “us” out,’ I laugh awkwardly to cover my terror, ‘taking it one tiny step at a time.’

‘Here’s to more steps like that one,’ Ryan answers shakily.