Fury

I land on my feet on an incline so treacherous that only a bird, or an angel, could keep their footing upon it.

‘Uri,’ I say, shaken, as he lowers his right hand, his sword and wings instantly disintegrating into motes of light.

‘You are the very last one I would have expected to come here,’ he murmurs, bewildered, looking into my eyes. ‘How did you even know to …’

There’s suddenly a living flame cupped in his left hand where before there was a weapon. He plays the light across my features, my form, his dark brows knitted together in consternation, seeking a trap, the hand of the Devil in this. Finally satisfied with what he sees, the flame in his palm goes out and he smiles. It transforms his stern countenance utterly.

‘You’re alive,’ he says, and I hear the praise and wonder in his voice.

I’m shocked into immobility when he reaches out and embraces me, murmuring, ‘You’re safe.’

I close my own arms around him almost awkwardly, seeing the same expression on his face as must be literally mirrored in mine: embarrassed affection, surprise, a softening, perhaps, of entrenched attitudes.

‘We used to fight like cat and dog,’ he mutters, letting me go.

‘Don’t believe those days are over, brother,’ I reply with a crooked grin. ‘But it is good to see you, you don’t know how much. Jegudiel sent me.’ Instantly, Uri’s gaze sharpens. ‘He told me to tell you that he’s taken Selaphiel beyond Luc’s reach. Selaphiel will need time to heal, but he lives.’

I see relief flood Uri’s countenance.

‘What of the others?’ I ask, my own anxiety sharpening my voice. ‘Gabriel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Barachiel? And what of the great Michael?’

Uriel’s smile is instantly wiped clean. ‘Of Jeremiel, Barachiel and Michael, I have no word. From Milan, they went in pursuit of Luc and vile Hakael, Luc’s paramour Gudrun, a score of fallen ophanim and malakhim shrieking in their wake. Gabriel and I followed the deceivers Jetrel and Shamshiel to the east, but Gabriel was ahead of me by some leagues, and I saw him taken …’

My soul seems to go cold at his words. ‘Gabriel?’

‘Your great friend and protector, yes,’ Uri says quietly, ‘taken by a score of demons over the mountainous citadel, Machu Picchu — a place that has always reeked to me of blood and untold power. They bore him into the earth there, and, though I scoured the ancient city for two days, I could find no trace of him, though I could still feel his presence very strongly there.’ I hear the puzzlement in his voice.

‘We have to get him out,’ I say, shaken.

Uri shakes his head. ‘It falls to me to free Gabriel. With Jegudiel and Selaphiel gone, Raphael missing, Barachiel, Michael and Jeremiel unaccounted for, there is no one else. I can no longer afford to wait here for news, or reinforcements, though I will leave a sign here of where I have gone.’ His voice becomes very quiet. ‘If I must take that place apart, stone by stone, then I will do it.

‘And as for you …’ He places his gleaming hands upon my shoulders and looks into my face that is so much like his. ‘It is no longer safe for you to remain in this world. You are alone, and we can no longer afford you any kind of protection, for we ourselves are under siege. So you must do the one thing that will secure us all: quit this place, as Selaphiel has done; take yourself out of Luc’s reach forever. Now. Tonight.’

I go cold as I hear my own thoughts coming back at me from Uriel’s mouth. I thought I would have more time; when I should have known that time has been against me from the very start.

I shake my head wildly, hear myself say, as if from a great distance, ‘But it’s too soon. Not tonight. Let me at least help you locate Gabriel —’

Uriel cuts me off imperiously. ‘We are balanced on a knife’s edge. You should never have fallen; this “Eden” was never intended for you. Like you, the world beneath our feet is beginning to awaken — Kangra in India has just been levelled by an earthquake greater than the one that destroyed it in 1905; and ruinous tremors have been felt in places as diverse as Ning Xia and Quetta, Erzincan and Asgabat, Messina, Edinburgh and Sumatra. The world is moving, sister; it is on fire.’

He sees me shake my head in denial and his voice roughens. ‘You must have seen that the seas around the Izu-shotM are filling with magma. All this must mean that Jeremiel, Barachiel and Michael have somehow failed; they no longer have Luc contained, and his ancient plan of conquest, the war to end all wars, has begun. Hell is coming, sister, and you are our greatest liability, our greatest weakness. Leave now, or doom us all.’

‘But I can’t just leave,’ I whisper, seeing flame-haired, emerald-eyed Gabriel, prince among princes, bound by chains of fire far from the light of the sun; seeing Ryan sitting alone in an anonymous airport terminal, surrounded by strangers.

I’ll wait, Ryan once said. I’ll wait forever if I have to.

And he will. It will destroy him if I never come back, if he never knows what happened to me, or how I feel about him.

‘You don’t understand,’ I say, anguished. ‘I’m not alone. Not any more. I have ties again, both old and new.’

Uriel’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle. ‘Forget him, as he will forget you, in time. Their lives are but a fleeting moment in ours, and the pain, too, will be fleeting.’

‘But I love him. And he’s waiting for me. I have to say goodbye. At least let me say goodbye. And I love you. And I’m so sorry.’ I begin to shake.

Uriel’s fingers tighten in anger upon my shoulders. ‘It is your capacity to love, that disastrous capacity of yours to desire, to want, that has brought us all to this pass! You would condemn Gabriel to additional torment for the sake of a mortal man? He is not for you. He is nothing to such as we are.’

‘But Ryan is everything to me,’ I plead, even though I know that it’s like pleading with a stone. ‘He brought me back to life, and loved me when I was unlovable and untouchable, an outcast. He saw me and knew me, in life after life, even when he’d never seen my true face. Yes, I made the mistake of falling for Luc, and you will never cease to blame me for that single, youthful folly. But what Luc does now, the destruction and terror and evil he brings down on everything and everyone, he does not do those things in my name, but solely in his.

‘To everyone but Ryan,’ I whisper, ‘I will always be a marked creature, an exile. He deserves to know that I love him, and that I was forced to let him go. He’s been hurt enough, Uriel. Gabriel knows how I feel about him. Gabriel would understand.’

‘Gabriel was always too soft-hearted where you were concerned,’ Uriel growls, releasing me as if I disgust him. ‘And now I must be similarly afflicted, because this once I will allow it — I will permit you to exchange your pretty farewells with your pretty human, and then you must go.’

‘But Gabriel …’ I plead.

‘But Gabriel nothing,’ Uri snarls. ‘I will get him out myself. I will fall upon the demons that hold him like the pestilence that once emptied that sacred city itself of life. But before I do, I will come with you to find this “Ryan”, and he and I will both watch you leave. This time, there is no escape.’

I look at Uriel and see all the power and arrogance and inflexibility that so defines our kind. ‘You’re a bully,’ I say bitterly.

His reply is sharp and instant. ‘I’m a pragmatist. It is the only choice, and you know I am right.’

I know he is, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

I cover my face with my hands and weep then, weep tears of fire. They fall through my fingers onto the stone, each one glimmering for a moment, like a jewel, before dispersing into the chill night air.

‘Tears? And for a human?’ Uriel murmurs in amazement, making no move to comfort me because this is something I’ve so clearly brought upon myself. ‘What have you become?’

‘I am what you’ve made me,’ I sob. ‘You Eight. Luc, even. Deserving of neither love nor pity. And because I am a creature of my word, I will do my duty. I will do as you command. But if you’re coming with me,’ and now there’s disdain in my voice at the sight of him standing there so regal, so beautiful, the very essence of what it means to be exalted and all-powerful, ‘you’re going to have to do things my way. For a change.’