Fury

Then Uriel, who was my watcher when I was Carmen, grasps my hand tightly and lets me into his thoughts, showing me the way. I see the approach up the coast to Ryan’s home town of Paradise; see it from above, from the ground; the main street, Ryan’s house, even the tree Ryan set fire to. All through Uriel’s eyes. It’s no longer a mystery to me, where Paradise is.

‘You saw it?’ Uriel murmurs.

I hang my head, nodding, bright tears spilling down my cheeks onto the stone at my feet. Then, still weeping, I embrace Ryan in my arms — for he is and always will be my burden — and we six leap off the solid surface of the world into the lowering skies above Machu Picchu, and turn west for the coast.

The sun is setting as we pass through the heavy skies over Chiclayo. We travel in silence, each buried in our own thoughts, our own agonies.

Without warning, as we begin to cross over open sea, Gabriel, Uriel, Barachiel and Jeremiel splinter into light; they are already halfway to the Gulf of Panama before we’ve even registered they’ve gone.

‘Now that it’s just the two of us,’ Ryan says suddenly, trying hard to smile, ‘I have to confess that this is one thing I won’t miss, flying.’

I spiral slowly to a stop, and as I do, I shift, so that Ryan is looking at me. At my wide-set brown eyes, my long, straight, dark brown hair, my strong-featured face that I’ve always thought suits Uriel so much more than it suits me. We’re alone. It may be the last time I can truly be myself with him. Though I know I should be careful — careful every moment I’m still in this world — I want him to remember me like this, no other way.

Ryan’s eyes light up as he takes me in. He runs a finger down my luminous bare arm in the way that always makes my soul shiver. My robes flare and shift of their own accord, as if carried by ghostly winds, curls of energy lifting and curling into the night air.

Ryan cups the side of my face gently as I hold him braced in my arms. ‘Welcome back from wherever you’ve been,’ he says.

‘I’ve been here all along,’ I murmur. ‘And we’ve had fun, right? Hasn’t it been fun? A blast?’

My laughter has a ring of desperation to it as I try to make light of everything that has happened. Already gone forever, already memory.

In reply, Ryan captures my lips with his, his mouth opening over mine, searching and hot and sweet. But he releases me before we hit the invisible barrier that will always separate us.

‘We’ve been hurt enough today,’ he whispers raggedly, resting his forehead against mine. ‘We don’t need to hurt each other, too.’

Suspended together, we gaze down at the darkening sea below.

‘Seeing the world with the girl you love,’ I say despairingly. ‘What more could any guy wish for?’

‘A whole lot more,’ Ryan says harshly. ‘A whole lifetime.’

My voice is very quiet as I reply. ‘You say that now, but I’ve lived enough lifetimes to know that you start off with love and then everything hits you, everything swamps you, and you can’t help it, you change — or those around you do — and you have to bear the consequences. I’ve been beaten, cheated, abused and left for dead, Ryan. Not a great track record. Those are some of the things I will remember from this world. That’s what I’ve learnt about life.’

‘But none of that is me,’ Ryan replies hotly. ‘It won’t ever be, and I won’t let anything like that touch you again. I can’t promise you that life won’t ever be boring, or a grind, or just plain hard, because that’s what it’s like for us down here, but I will always love you. If you remember anything, remember that.’

The words tumble out before I can stop them. ‘Luc said the same thing, once.’

Ryan’s eyes blaze dangerously. ‘Luc is the biggest asshole in the history of assholes. The only thing we have in common is you, and he blew it. Which just goes to prove he’s an asshole.’

‘Why are we even talking about this?’ I mutter. ‘This is it; this is all we’re ever going to get. Of course, we’ll have “some day”,’ I add bitterly, ‘but who knows if you’ll even remember me by then? You’ll have moved on, with your nice life, your nice family. While I will be exactly the same. Frozen in time. Sifting through shattered memories, living through them.’

‘You think it’ll be any easier for me?’ Ryan yells. ‘That’s me you’re talking about. You’ve just described what it’s going to be like for me. You blow through my life like a hurricane, and then you leave me?’

We stare at each other, seeing no way out.

‘It won’t last, this feeling,’ I murmur, trying to convince myself it’s true. ‘It’s just a feeling, chemicals. You’ll get over me. Soon, it will seem like a dream. To both of us.’

Before Ryan can say anything more, make any more of a case for the impossible, I grip him tightly in my arms and dive down towards the surface of the ocean. And for a moment, that terrible feeling — of falling, falling as if I will never stop — returns.

We soar above the heavy, boiling sea in silence. Me keeping Ryan warm; imprinting every line of his body, every quirk, every expression, into my consciousness, for later.

As we turn back towards land, the Gulf of California streaming away from us to our right, we begin to see lights in the darkness.

Ryan says suddenly, ‘What is that? Can you see it?’

From the air it looks like a thick slurry of sticks and debris, just sludge. But as I change trajectory, moving lower, I make out shapes in the darkness: tiled surfaces and window frames; the roofs of houses, pancaked so they resemble books laid down flat, their spines facing up. Just floating out to sea.

‘My God,’ Ryan murmurs, sickened, as we skim low over a bobbing soup of submerged boats, broken-off pylons, oil drums, corrugated iron, sections of road and jetty. ‘What happened here?’

Then we smell burning, and see the glow of fire, a mile or so inland, amongst the electric lights of evening. There are unimaginable things in the water. Cars, bobbing like bath toys; the tail of a light aeroplane pointing upwards; the smashed hulls of maxi yachts; overturned freighters and shipping containers just lying in the shallows as if a giant hand reached out of the sea and pulled them over. Or a giant wave. And bodies. So many bodies.

Ryan and I look at each other in horror. ‘Lauren,’ we both say, as I put on a burst of speed and the lower edge of the wild Coast Ranges are suddenly beneath us.

22

We pass over Port Marie in near darkness. Up the coast road, Paradise gives off the same eerie feel of neglect and abandonment. The small, dusty-looking town is laid out in a strict grid on the edge of a swampy peninsula that just seems to peter out into the ocean. It looks as if only the streetlights are still working.

When we move lower, skimming over the main drag, we see that it’s deserted and there are very few lights on in the houses, so neatly and regularly spaced. There are crazy Christmas decorations on the rooftops of some, but none are lit up. Many driveways are empty of cars.

Ryan looks at me enquiringly as I head south, intending to approach his place from another direction.

‘Someone’s watching the house,’ I remind him quietly.

I come in over the back fence, land lightly near the steps by the back door. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and one somewhere upstairs, but otherwise the house is in complete darkness.

Ryan mounts the back porch and opens the screen door, but before he can raise his hand to knock, something comes charging out of the darkness at our backs. The Daleys’ three Dobermans — all sleek and vicious and bullet-headed — howling and frothing like dark-hearted demons.

‘Stay!’ Ryan roars, but I move back down the stairs into the garden and say grimly, ‘Let them come, let them do their worst.’

I am ready for them, ready to stop them in their tracks; for if they dash themselves against me, as they long to, they will die.

But when they see me, see the luminosity coming off my skin, they begin to whine, circling me at an uneasy