Fury

distance, before all three lie down in the grass at my feet, as if exhausted.

A faint glimmer begins to coalesce upon the black and tan coats of the panting, shuddering dogs. It pools and lifts, shifting away from them, and now I see the dogs through a veil of light that grows and changes and becomes the outline of a young girl. She’s just a sketch, a suggestion, grey and ghostly. But I know her, though I have never known her name. Behind me, I hear Ryan gasp.

‘Malakh,’ I say, ‘you have followed me through life after life. What is it that you wish me to know?’

The apparition raises her eyes to me and I see that she would have been very beautiful, once, like a doll. ‘Come closer,’ she whispers. ‘Listen well, for I am dying.’

The dogs whimper. I hear the back door to the Daleys’ house open, but I don’t turn around, too intent am I on hearing the creature’s message. ‘Speak,’ I urge her, ‘for I am listening.’

‘Lord Lucifer wishes to parley,’ the malakh murmurs. ‘Raphael for you. At sunrise, at the beach named for that reef shaped like a devil’s crown. If you come quietly, he will be just. Even with the Eight. But if you do not …’

For a moment, her outline wavers, and the dogs lift up their heads and howl in terrible anguish, as if she speaks through them.

‘If you come armed for battle,’ she gasps finally, ‘or with deceit, then he will remake the universe as he sees fit.’

I see that she had long, pale, curling hair once, and large eyes, like a greeting-card angel.

‘How credulous you are,’ I say pityingly. ‘At sunrise, no matter what I do, he will destroy us all. It has already begun.’

The malakh shakes her head in denial.

Anger explodes in me: that my last hours with Ryan should still brook interference from monsters I’d thought well behind me.

‘Double-dealer,’ I hiss. ‘It was you who betrayed my presence in Milan to Luc, wasn’t it? You ran messages between Michael and K’el, between those that remained of the Eight, and then you betrayed us all. Why? What did he promise you?’

When she raises her own eyes to look at me, I see an answering, ugly fury in them. ‘You dare to ask why?’ Her voice is like a death rattle. ‘I owe you no loyalty. I begged you, and you would not help me. He will give me what you elohim will not — a living body in which to end my days. I have suffered, how I have suffered!’

She shrieks, and the dogs scrabble at the grass and dirt at her heels, in agony.

‘Sunrise,’ she screeches, raising a pointing finger, ‘or he dies, she dies. Everything you ever loved or touched in this world will be slaughtered, damaged, despoiled.’

I turn to see what the malakh gazes on with her empty, shredding orbs. Lauren and Ryan are framed in the doorway — one so tall and dark, the other so slight, so pale, both scarcely daring to move or breathe.

When I turn back to face the malakh, she is gone, and the dogs are dead.

It’s surreal to be helping Ryan bury his dogs under a moonless sky in a ghost town. Surreal to feel grief for creatures that so feared and hated me. But I do.

When we finally get inside, we watch in numb silence as Lauren deadlocks the back door and draws the chain across. It’s so strange to be back inside the Daleys’ white-on-white house. The ceilings seem too low, everything too small, as if the house was built for children. But it must be an illusion of my shattered mind, for everything is exactly as it was, and I am no taller than I was as Irina. But that feeling that I might dissolve, might blow apart at any second, seems to have returned. The world feels as if it is pitching beneath me; any moment, I might fall off and never find my way back.

As we trail through the kitchen, through the hallway and up the stairs, everything is exactly as I last saw it; save for Lauren’s bedroom, which I hardly recognise. There’s colour everywhere, lights, softness, warmth, as if the room is a bright, downy cocoon from which she might one day emerge, whole again.

Lauren sits on the edge of her bed and beckons me to sit, too, her blue eyes wide with wonder. But I’m too wired to do anything but pace, and I catch her eyes following me around the room.

Ryan’s leaning against the dresser, almost asleep on his feet. He looks tired and rumpled and sexy, and he will never, ever be mine. I’m suddenly swamped by so much pain that I stumble and almost fall to the ground.

‘What do I do?’ I wail.

Ryan just reaches out and catches me, pulls me close. And all I let myself hear for a while is his heartbeat, the murmur of blood beneath his skin. The last thing I want to hear at night; and, in the morning, the first. But it’s never going to be that way.

There’s a loud knock on the half-open door and Ryan and I look up, startled, as a male voice calls out belligerently, ‘Lauren? Who’s in there? Are you okay?’

The door’s shoved open and Richard Coates is standing there. He’s wearing blue jeans and nothing else but tatts, and his dark blond hair is still wet from the shower. It’s longer than I remember it, falling into his extraordinarily pale, ice-blue eyes. When he sees me, he just freezes; the blood runs right out of his face. It takes him a little while to work out who else is in the room, because I’m all that he can see. I can tell that even though he’s never seen me like this before, like a being carved out of titanium, wreathed in light and sorrow, he recognises me. Our minds met once, when I was Carmen and searching his memories for traces of Lauren.

‘Hey, Rich,’ Ryan says tightly.

I see that he’s looking at the way Richard is dressed, then at his sister on the bed, her long, ash blonde hair unbound, her emaciated frame draped in a shapeless blue tracksuit, like something a child would wear, her bird- like legs tucked beneath her.

‘Ry,’ Richard whispers, his eyes still welded to me leaning against Ryan. ‘When did you … get back?’

‘Just now,’ Ryan says shortly. ‘This is Mercy.’

‘I kind of figured,’ Richard replies.

He tears his eyes away from me at last, then takes a seat on the other side of the bed from Lauren, his head up proudly, refusing to feel ashamed.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ryan growls.

Richard and Lauren exchange glances, before she looks down at her new, bright red coverlet. Her thin hair falls forward over one shoulder, hiding her ruined face and haunted eyes.

‘Tsunami warning system’s been activated,’ Richard replies when Lauren doesn’t speak. ‘The epicentre was nowhere near us, but they evacuated everyone to Little Falls Junction anyway. Lauren was desperate to come back when it didn’t look like anything was going to happen. She couldn’t handle the crowds. Said people were staring and talking. And they were — it was a circus when word got out she was there. I couldn’t let her stay here on her own.’

‘Where are Mom and Dad?’ Ryan snaps, and Lauren bristles at his tone of voice.

‘I did what you said!’ she cries, suddenly furious. ‘I arranged two tickets to a show in Portland I thought Mom might like to see — dinner, hotel, the works — then I told them everything was fine, that they needed to get away now that I was back, that I badly needed space. And I did it. I got them out of town. And now they’re stranded on the other side of the highway. Nobody’s getting in or out, not tonight.’

‘Why didn’t you go with them?’ Ryan mutters, his face softening.

‘I’m not ready to see a show or have dinner, Ryan, look at me. Today proved that. I thought I was going to die just from all the eyes. Besides, look outside my window. It wouldn’t matter where I went.’

Ryan strides over to the window and pulls one of the cheerfully patterned curtains aside, peers out. ‘There’s nothing there,’ he says with a frown.

Lauren looks at me numbly and I head across to the window, glance out quickly through the side of a curtain. And I see him. Over the side fence, outside the house next door, standing on the footpath, shining in the darkness with a sickly light. He looks up sharply as if he can sense me.

I nod at Ryan and his shoulders slump.