Fury

‘The way Luc did?’ Ryan says.

My voice is troubled. ‘And the others. K’el said a hundred elohim fell with Luc, and who knows how many from the ranks of the malakhim, the seraphim, more …’

Ryan’s voice is very quiet, very controlled. ‘You know what really scares me? That maybe this is it. We get this one shot at things and then I never see you again. I don’t think I could stand it if this is all we’re ever going to have. It’s not enough. It isn’t fair.’ His laughter is self-mocking. ‘Listen to me.’

Around us, the wind whistles, and scudding clouds cover the moon until what little light there was has turned to shade.

‘Just don’t ever leave me without saying goodbye,’ Ryan says suddenly, violently. ‘Don’t leave me at all.’

Then he lowers his head to capture my mouth, and I turn and wrap my arms around his neck, letting all the words I can’t bring myself to say to him, all the unspoken fears and longings inside me, speak of themselves in this one kiss.

There’s that lick of fire along my nerves. But Ryan and I remain locked together, saying everything that can be said through touch alone; though what we are is pain, an impossibility.

He finally tears himself free against his will — unable to bear being with me, or away from me — and I place my fingers against his wounded mouth and take away the hurt, instantly.

‘You’re like fire and water,’ he gasps against my hand. ‘You’ve spoilt me for anyone else in this life, any life, you know that, don’t you?’

‘You’ll get over me,’ I reply sombrely. ‘The way others have.’

I suddenly recall Gudrun’s red-painted nails resting on Luc’s arm; the way Luc’s sapphire cufflinks struck fire from the lights beneath the dome of the Galleria, complementing the shade of her brilliant eyes exactly. He tried to kill me, I think wildly. I can’t still love him. But, despite everything that’s happened, I can’t help the sudden stabbing pain I feel, wave after wave. I bury my face in Ryan’s shoulder, rigid with grief for what Luc and I once were to each other. It might have been Luc here, in my arms now, if everything were different.

It’s still so fresh for me. Luc has had all the time in the world, but for me, it was only yesterday that I went from being everything to him to being his quarry and his prey.

‘He may be the Devil,’ Ryan growls disbelievingly, placing his lips against my hair and binding me to him so fiercely it almost hurts, ‘but he’s still a moron. There’s no getting over someone like you.’

I almost say them aloud then, the words Ryan longs to hear.

And I do love him, with every particle of my being, but it’s a love complicated by so many things. And the words can’t change the fact that we’re already out of time; that it was too late for us before we even got started. So I choke them back and they remain unsaid.

‘You deserve so much more than I can give you,’ I whisper raggedly.

‘Shut up,’ he says fiercely, and the short, hard kiss he uses to silence me is almost brutal.

‘What’s the plan?’ he sighs finally against my skin, the tone of his voice more normal, more gentle.

‘I need to get my bearings,’ I murmur thickly through the lingering vestiges of my grief and shame. ‘Nuriel’s close, I can almost feel her. Luc couldn’t have had time to move her; he was in such a hurry to get to me. I want you to take the dresses to Bianca, tell her I stopped to look at a bunch of statues on the way. And while you’re distracting her with your wit, charm and superficial good looks,’ I feel his lips curve against me, involuntarily, ‘I’ll take a look around.’

Ryan pulls back from me and looks down into my eyes. ‘I can’t tell you what you can or can’t do,’ he says gravely, ‘because you’ll do it anyway. You always do exactly as you please. But don’t just vanish again because it’s easier than trying to work things out. Stay safe. Come back to me as quickly as you can. My, uh, charms are a little rusty these days.’

He retrieves his fake spectacles and shoves them onto his face, blinking, and it startles a laugh out of me. I flick the bill of his cap so that it falls backwards off his head and he has to bend to retrieve it with a grunt, jamming it back onto his buzz-cut scalp.

‘When you reach her, lose the cap, lose the glasses,’ I say with a grin, ‘and you’ll soon have one of the world’s most eligible rich girls eating out of your hand. She’s beautiful, too. Stunning. It could be love at first sight.’ I bite my lip. ‘Which could be a good thing, in the circumstances … a merciful thing.’

Ryan gives me a crooked smile. ‘Good try, but I’m not biting. Lightning never strikes twice, not with me.’ He pulls me close again. ‘Come back?’ he breathes against me, so tentatively that I wrap my arms around him tightly to contain his fear.

‘You know I will,’ I say fiercely. ‘I’m not Carmen any more, I’m not Lela. It’s not going to play out the same way.’

I turn and pick up the pretty dresses, then hand Ryan the backpack, which he puts on without even registering he’s doing it. Then I take him by the hand and lead him out of the folly. Low lights set into the edges of the driveway point the way down to the guesthouse, and I feel time recommencing, reeling out of my hands the way it always does, like an angler’s line.

Ryan’s worn-down boot heels slip a little on the steep, slick surface. Below us, I see the front door of the guesthouse open, and there’s a slender silhouette of a girl in the doorway, surrounded by a halo of electric light, looking up at us, just waiting.

As the driveway switches back and the guesthouse is momentarily lost to sight, I thrust the dress hangers into Ryan’s hands and whisper, ‘Be seeing you.’

Before he can frame a reply, I let my outline shred into a pale white mist, let myself break down, dissolve. Then I am ether, scattering into a billion pieces, soundlessly.

I see him step back in shock, looking around him wildly. ‘God, Merce, I hate how you do that!’ he exclaims.

It makes me laugh, and he flinches at the low sound that seems to come at him from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Trailing faint motes of light, I circle him once, twice — lighter than an embrace, than a kiss — before slipstreaming away into the night, down through the gardens of Villa Nicolin and through the bars of the tall iron gates that mark the lower boundary of the estate.

Down, down, to the waters of the lake.

I flow along the length of the narrow, private jetty, unseen and soundless. The boats moored there bump and creak as I head out over the water, skimming low, slicing through the rising wind that howls like a live thing and buffets the tall trees lining the shore. It’s so very dark, but I’m still able to discern the clouds that are once more building in the sky — massive, unnatural, like the sails of ghostly galleons.

Something wicked this way comes. The elements herald its very progress. I can feel in every particle of my being that dark forces are on the move.

I need to find Nuriel before Luc discovers I’ve already left Milan.

When I’m out over the water, I turn, a disembodied zephyr, and scan my surroundings. And that’s when it becomes obvious that I’ve seen this place before; I once dreamt of it so vividly I’d imagined that Luc and I inhabited one body, and that all the evil he committed that night was wrought by my own hand.

Luc was on the point of cutting Nuriel down with his sword when she made one last, desperate, spiralling attempt to pull away from him. In my mind’s eye I see them again — how her feint caught Luc by surprise. How he lost precious seconds before turning and pursuing her. They had exploded through the physical world — hunter and hunted — leaving destruction and incandescence in their wake. It makes sense to me now, how the main street of Moltrasio was destroyed; all those people turned to ash. When angels and demons collide, collateral damage is the only certainty.

In my dream, there was a vast estate by the water’s edge. A great house atop a hill, with a smaller outbuilding, a private pier, at the base of the property. From the water, it’s clear that Villa Nicolin is the house I glimpsed at the moment Nuriel dove down out of the sky. If Luc was acting in haste that night, if he’d wanted to secure her, but also lay a trap for anyone bent on saving her, the only place he could have hidden her would be in the lake itself.

I rise high into the air and gaze down at the black body of water below without fear, without sickness, and