Fury

close-cropped dark hair just emerging from the stairwell to my right.

Then I snap my eyes forward. Look at the place I need to get to, where I need to be. It’s funny how desperation feels a little like love. Makes you do things your conscious mind would never countenance.

But I am what I am, and that means I will always have a choice.

And then I throw myself into thin air, Ryan held fast in my arms.

‘Mercy!’ he yells again, feeling the magnetic pull of the world beneath us.

Though I am beset by fears that none of my kind has ever faced before, I soar — against gravity, against all reason.

Freedom is all that matters. Freedom, and Ryan.

As I cross the abyss that lies between one solid surface and another, I know that I am power, and that I’m back.

4

I land badly as usual, on the rooftop terrace beyond the double barrier of greenery, glass and steel I’d glimpsed from the roof of the Duomo, almost taking out a row of chairs and tables. One seat teeters for a moment, then makes an iron clanging sound as it falls over. It sounds like an explosion.

We were there, and now we’re here, and it’s only taken seconds. I’m exultant, half-disbelieving, yet also strangely clear-headed. Ryan was right. Every time I face down my fear is an act of defiance that can only make me stronger.

I release my death grip on Ryan, who sways a little on the spot, wordless at feeling a new surface beneath his feet. I look back at the Duomo and see five figures in black gathered beyond the barriers of stone that resemble shark’s teeth. They’re waving their hands, discussing us heatedly. I see the younger one, the one from the stairs, run back up the walkway and disappear. The old priest stares down at us across the chasm, awe and astonishment on his lined face.

‘Where … are we?’ Ryan slurs, feeling around for a chair and sitting heavily. ‘When my brain is … working again, you’ll have to tell me what the hell just happened. You have this way of making me … lose my grip on reality. Being with you is like being in a dream —’

‘You can’t wake from?’ I finish softly. ‘Welcome to my world.’

Ryan looks up at me for a moment, as if he’s imprinting my new face, my travelling face, upon his memory, or making his peace with it.

‘Ready?’ I say quietly. ‘We’ve got to keep moving.’

Ryan blinks, taking in the silent terrace around us, the overturned chair, his eyes widening as he spies the watching men gathered on the roofline opposite. ‘What are we still doing here!’ he exclaims. ‘Let’s go.’

There’s the sudden wail of an alarm being triggered, then the snick of a lock or bolt, a door opening.

I turn my head sharply to see a man in uniform emerging out of the curved structure of steel and glass behind Ryan. The young man is of average height, with a slight frame and receding jawline that makes him seem even younger. Beneath his peaked cap, he’s breathing heavily and nervously training a handgun on me.

Between us, there’s a sea of rain-speckled tables and chairs. He takes in our clothes, our builds, weighing us up. I get snatches of the panicky argument he’s running against himself in his head: thieves? he’s thinking. Or … terrorists?

Ryan stiffens as I murmur aloud, ‘They’re saying maybe the Galleria was a “terrorist attack”, he thinks we’re armed.’

This is some kind of high-end department store, I realise suddenly, getting a flash of the building’s interior as the man relives the heart-stopping moment he spotted us from the inside, through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

‘Police!’ he calls out shakily in Italian-accented English over the blare of the alarm. ‘Raise the hands.’

I feel his intense fear. He’s only a few months into this job, and he was supposed to go off duty in twenty- two minutes precisely until his commanding officer ordered him to respond to some nonsense from a bunch of priests about people on the roof. I skim all that out of the white noise in his head, and his name, too, because he’s yelling at himself in the third person. Humans are like radio transmitters; it’s hard to think with the air jammed so full of their noise. I know I should be afraid, but for the first time in a very long while, I feel an absolute calm.

‘Vincenzo,’ I say loudly, and the young man gives a start, goes pale, at the mention of his name. ‘You need to let us leave.’

His eyes widen and he shouts, ‘Impossible, signorina. Raise the hands.’

Without taking my eyes from Vincenzo’s face, I draw Ryan to his feet. The chair legs scrape a little as he straightens up and turns around slowly. Vincenzo’s expression flickers fearfully as he looks from me to Ryan, now standing side by side. We both have our backs to the barriers now.

Vincenzo moves closer. ‘There is nowhere to run,’ he says anxiously. ‘Raise the hands, or I will be forced to shoot you. Not to kill, you understand,’ he adds almost pleadingly, ‘only to wound.’

Still holding his gaze unwaveringly, I take another step backwards towards the head-high glass wall, the screen of trees behind it, one hand on the sleeve of Ryan’s leather jacket.

‘What are you going to do?’ Ryan mutters, sounding panicky. ‘He’s got a gun. You know what happened last time.’

‘What happened last time happened to Lela,’ I say fiercely. ‘It’s not going to happen to us. I need you to go with whatever I ask you to do. I need you to trust me.’

Before Ryan can reply, a burst of static issues out of a black device clipped to Vincenzo’s belt and I catch the word ‘localizzato’; located.

Vincenzo fumbles for the receiver, his gun hand wavering a little. While he’s distracted, Ryan and I keep inching backwards.

‘Not far now,’ I say. ‘When you feel the glass screen behind you, move right. Whatever you do, even if we’re separated, just aim for that corner.’ I see Ryan nod out of the corner of my eye. ‘Wait for me?’

Ryan’s eyes fly to mine, and I remember: wait for me were the last words I ever said to him when I was Lela.

A second man in uniform suddenly charges through the door Vincenzo left open. He’s stocky and tall, with a dark, even tan, massive shoulders and arms like sides of beef. One of his big, broad, black-gloved hands is wrapped around a semi-automatic identical to Vincenzo’s. He thrusts Vincenzo aside and snarls: ‘Get down! Get down! Or I shoot the boy first, and then I shoot you.’

I let the flow of his thoughts wash through me and I know he’ll do it. In his world, everything can be solved with guns, with beatings, with violence. He’ll take Ryan down first, because he’s bigger, more of a threat. Then me.

I feel Ryan’s fingers tighten around mine, his palm slick with apprehension. Something dangerous rises in me and I push Ryan back behind me, the fingers of my right hand still linked through his.

‘We’re leaving,’ I say loudly and slowly. ‘We don’t want any trouble. We’re just going to walk away and disappear. You won’t ever see us again.’

I feel Ryan pause for a moment before beginning to move slowly to the right between the glass screen and the outermost row of chairs and tables.

The second officer narrows his eyes, not bothering to reply. Then he points his gun up into the air and pulls the trigger. One shot, skyward. A flock of pigeons explodes upwards, scattering and wheeling in all directions. Even over the shrilling alarm, the gunshot is very loud and seems to reverberate in the air for the longest time. This place will soon be swarming in uniformed men.

‘Ryan!’ I say sharply, looking back at him. ‘Go!’

I see his unwillingness to leave me: it’s in his eyes, in the tense line of his body. Then he releases my fingers, bends low and sprints full tilt towards the eastern corner of the terrace without looking back. In that single, telling gesture is all of his faith in me.

I keep drifting slowly in the same direction, my eyes never leaving the faces of the two policemen, the gap