Fury

I step forward, and as I do the demon holding Ryan tosses him out of the way as if he weighs nothing, as if he is nothing. Ryan gives a cry and lies still upon the tarmac.

The two creatures move forward, wreathing me in mist, and take hold of me. Cold moves instantly through me, paralysing me like an anaesthetist’s drug. The demons tower over me, drawing me closer, and I seem to see the first blush of morning rising within them, or through them. The stars in the sky seem to go out, one by one, as I feel myself begin to shiver into pieces. They mean to draw me down, down into Hell. I have made my pact with them — my life for Ryan’s; a bargain I would make again and again — and there seems no way out.

But there’s a flash of something else, something barely glimpsed. A coming together, a coalescence, a rising. Not the sun, but something that seems even brighter. I bow my head, using the last of my energy to wrench myself sideways as Uriel takes form behind my captors, his giant wings unfurling soundlessly, his broadsword in his hand.

He swings it in one smooth arc and I hear the sizzle of the blade as it connects with the demons’ energy. He cuts them both down and they vanish mid-shriek, the wind bearing the last shreds of their dead energy away.

‘You are a great magnet for trouble,’ Uriel roars over my kneeling figure.

Then he looks up suddenly as he catches rapid movement above and behind me. I turn sluggishly to see men in full riot gear on the ledge above us, weapons drawn. Some stupid order is given, loudly, to fire.

But faster than the men can let loose a volley of shots, Uriel has already knotted one of his great fists into Ryan’s leather jacket, the other into the stuff of me, and leapt off the surface of the world.

By the time the bullets hit the space where we were standing, turning the air blue with lead and smoke, we’ve already left Narita International — all of Tokyo — far behind us.

18

I struggle to pull free of Uriel’s mighty grip. As if proving a point, he lets go of me only when he’s ready to, hoisting Ryan more securely into his arms. Ryan’s still unconscious — head hanging down, limbs slack, backpack still looped over his broad shoulders.

Uriel is silent for a long time as we rise and rise and rise. We’re spearing straight into the sky side by side, so far above the surface of the earth that the air is soon choppy and frigid. The blush of a new dawn seems to be following in our wake, as if we are drawing a veil of light across the world, as if we are its sun.

We’re so far up now, that I seem to see the world curving beneath us, hear the vast sound of it turning. Like a giant, slowly grinding wheel.

‘We’re too high,’ I say sharply to Uriel.

He flies on in silence, his long, dark hair slipstreaming out behind him. His form is massive in comparison to mine, still winged, still deadly. He’s a thing of such singular, gleaming beauty, built along such mythical lines, that I can hardly look away.

‘It will kill Ryan, to be this high,’ I insist harshly. ‘He hasn’t moved, he might be dead. We need to take him down. Give him to me.’

Uriel glances at me with an unfathomable expression in his dark eyes, before refocusing upon the horizon, still holding Ryan out of my reach.

‘Every moment he’s with you puts him at mortal risk,’ he says finally. ‘Let him sleep until wakefulness is required; it will be less hard on him. He’ll do well enough with me.’

I realise then that Uriel is doing this deliberately, keeping Ryan under, keeping him away from me, as if he fears I’ll be tempted to do something bold, something stupid, like escape with Ryan; the two of us fugitives forever from all that dwell above and below. And I’m seriously tempted to try, but nowhere on earth would ever be safe again, and no matter how much I love him and ache to be with him, Ryan never signed up for that.

‘You still don’t trust me,’ I say bitterly, almost to myself. ‘And why would you?’

Uriel doesn’t reply, he just picks up speed, streaking away through the lightening sky. I find myself fighting to keep up, still feeling the effects of the cloud giants’ icy, paralysing touch in my system.

‘They were nephilim,’ Uriel calls out suddenly over his shoulder, as if responding to a question I’ve just asked. ‘And you were lucky. Ryan drew them to him first, but you, I think, were unexpected. They were uncertain about you, and it made them slow to act. They are usually fatal to the unwary.’

I draw abreast of him, only because he’s letting me.

‘Lucky you were there,’ I say.

‘I had nothing to sacrifice, nothing to lose, unlike you.’ His voice is very quiet. ‘You’ve changed so much,’ he considers my human disguise wryly, ‘both inside and out, that I hardly recognise you.’

‘The creature you used to know is separated from the being I am now by an unfordable river. Everything that has happened to me has made me who I am,’ I reply.

Without warning, Uriel’s luminous wings shred into nothingness, as if we have left some zone of immediate danger.

‘We’re safe enough, for now,’ he says, glancing sideways at me. ‘No demon could trouble us for long at this elevation. Though they crave the sun, they have no hope ever of reaching it. If he were not with us,’ he looks briefly at Ryan, silent in his arms, ‘I would already be in the skies above Huayna Picchu, scouring the great ruins below for any sign of Gabriel. When we reach Cusco, we three must part ways. Ryan will be safer amongst his own kind.’

‘At least let us help you find Gabriel,’ I plead.

Uriel’s gaze is shrewd. ‘And buy you both more time together? I think not, sister.’

‘I have agreed to nothing; neither has Ryan,’ I say fiercely. ‘Nothing has been decided.’

Uriel shakes his head. ‘But I am decided.’ His voice is steely, ringing. ‘We part at Cusco.’

Without looking at me again, he surges away through the skies, knowing I am forced to follow while he holds my love captive in his arms.

We are silent for leagues, eating up the distance without need of rest — hundreds of miles passing in the blink of an eye. Tiny pinpoints of rock begin to appear in the ocean far below, and I feel Uriel turn us to the south. We fly over a small atoll of islands, scattered like random beads across the ocean. The air beneath us grows grey-dappled, then progressively more impenetrable the further south we move. The skies are thick with a stinking grey haze, a vast plume that is redolent of sulphur, ash and grit.

‘Laysan Island, the Gardner Pinnacles, Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu,’ Uriel says suddenly, taking us down.

We scream through the atmosphere at thousands of feet per second, falling out of the sky like missiles, and I begin to see the red glow of fire deep within the grey. Suddenly I see the cause of the haze: a giant island alive with fire — lava, cinders, ash spewing forth from a multitude of summits and vents and fissures, rocks falling into the sea as if hurled by unruly giants. The name of the place comes to me unbidden: Hawai’i.

‘One by one, they come to life,’ Uriel calls over his shoulder. ‘Every one destructive, a tragedy on its own, but together …’

He climbs again above the gritty smog and we rapidly leave the long, dirty plume behind, the grey stain stretching away from us to the north and the west.

‘Why don’t you stop them?’ I shout accusingly as I try in vain to chase him down. ‘If you’re so powerful, so close to Him, why let these disasters, these tragedies, even happen? You’re the ones with all the answers. Do something.’

Uriel flows to a sudden stop, blazing with anger, Ryan still held fast in his arms. I stop, too, suddenly very afraid of what he will do.

‘These are the conditions of this world,’ he thunders. ‘Conditions that Luc now exploits for his own ends. Despite everything that happens here, life continues to flourish; and that is the continuing miracle — that life persists. Do you think that we rejoice when any life is lost in unnatural circumstances? Well, do you?’

I shake my head, stunned to see the vehemence and repudiation in his expressive face, the great sorrow brimming in his dark, wide-set eyes.