Fury

‘Semyaza probably sent Barachiel and Jeremiel on a fool’s errand,’ I say dully. ‘Luc’s not in Panama, neither is Raphael. They’re here, they have to be. It was me he always wanted, not Michael. I think he always intended to lead us here — from Europe through Asia to the Americas. Nuriel, Selaphiel, Gabriel were all bait. It’s the kind of thing Luc would do. He wanted to wear us down. Let us think we were in control. This is exactly where we were supposed to end up. Without friends, without allies. Completely isolated and alone. He will never stop punishing me. Never.’

‘Back up,’ Richard interrupts, frowning, trying to understand.

Ryan tells him and Lauren what happened after Carmen: about Lela and Irina and all that followed. ‘It feels as if we’ve been running forever,’ he finishes tiredly. ‘And now I’m supposed to just stand back and watch as Mercy hands herself over to the Devil on Coronado Beach.’

‘You’re not alone,’ Richard says. ‘You’ve got us.’ He indicates himself and Lauren.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ryan says flatly. ‘Lauren isn’t going anywhere near that beach.’

‘Lauren is in the room,’ she says in a steely voice that I recognise, because it’s the same tone Ryan uses on me sometimes. ‘And maybe she wants to walk right up to the Prince of Darkness and spit in his face. Leave Lauren to Lauren.’

She and Ryan glare at each other.

‘It’s too dangerous —’ he begins, but she cuts him off. ‘What else could anyone do to me that hasn’t already been done?’ she screams.

Richard lays a hand on her arm, but she shrugs him off angrily, saying automatically, ‘Don’t touch me.’

Richard sighs, turns to me. ‘I have a bike you could use. You wouldn’t have to face him on your own.’

I am obscurely touched. ‘I can’t risk any one of you,’ I tell him. ‘And machines and weapons are no use against Luc’s people. But I thank you,’ I add softly.

‘If we choose to go, how could you stop us?’ he insists. ‘Choose to go?’ I parrot incredulously. ‘I don’t see how I have a choice, let alone any of you.’

‘Come, come,’ a familiar voice says quietly into the air beside me, ‘someone like you always has a choice.’

And the room is suddenly filled with light and a power of archangels. Gabriel and Uriel, Jeremiel and Barachiel, Jegudiel and … Michael. Towering and wingless, beautiful and inhuman.

‘Sister,’ they all say as one, as Lauren and Richard scramble backwards on the bed, shielding their eyes in awe against the light.

Michael’s dark eyes are clouded with pain. He drifts towards me slowly, bleeding from his manifold wounds, engulfs my small hands in his strong ones.

‘Tell me,’ he says quietly.

And I tell him of all that has occurred since we last met in Milan, and of the bargain that Luc would strike. ‘Me for Raphael,’ I finish hopelessly, ‘and justice and fair treatment for all in the new universal order, if you can believe that.’

‘Treachery,’ Michael murmurs.

‘Of course,’ I reply in anguish. ‘He is incapable of anything else.’

Michael looks down into Ryan’s face where he stands behind me. ‘Thank you,’ he says simply. ‘For keeping your word. And for letting her go, as she must.’

‘I can hardly make her stay,’ Ryan says bitterly. ‘But she doesn’t deserve to die.’

‘And nor will she,’ Michael snaps, his steely tone causing Ryan to pale. ‘We are not in the habit of sacrificing our own to Lucifer. Look out there.’

Michael points to Lauren’s window and Ryan hurries to draw the curtains open. When we peer down into the street, Ryan pulling me close, the watcher has vanished. I beckon Lauren and Richard over, and lean into Ryan.

‘Watch, watch,’ Michael says.

His voice is like a warm zephyr moving through the room as we look out over the darkened rooftops of Paradise. Against the thick covering of billowing black cloud overhead there are pinpoints of light in the sky, scores of them. They drift down towards earth, like the spinning clocks of dandelion flowers somehow illuminated, before coming together in a shimmering mass that vanishes suddenly, faster than sound, than light itself. A sight both extraordinarily beautiful and eerie.

‘Elohim, malakhim, ophanim, seraphim, others,’ Michael’s voice is quiet. ‘As many as may be spared.’

‘It’s like Judgment Day,’ Richard breathes beside me.

At my shoulder, Lauren is so still she could be made of marble. She watches, a heavy frown pleating her pale brow.

‘How could you guys possibly lose with those numbers?’ Ryan exclaims. ‘Aren’t you always going to be more powerful than those mutants Luc uses? Take him down, finish him.’

From behind us, Jeremiel murmurs, ‘Those angels that came down to earth, there will be no more reinforcements if any of them fall. Unlike Luc, we cannot “create” more.’

I stare at the sky, which is dark and blank once more with cloud. ‘Luc will get what he wants,’ I say finally, and I feel Ryan freeze beside me. ‘Me for Raphael. Like for like. That’s what he’ll get.’

Ryan spins me around, shakes me. ‘What are you saying?’ he cries. ‘That will trigger the “end time” you’re all so afraid of! Why aren’t you fighting it?’ He looks accusingly at the archangels gathered around us. ‘Why are you allowing this to happen?’

‘Listen to her,’ Uriel urges, his face so like mine.

I know he is the key to this whole damned mess. He is the one to buy us the time we need to save Raphael, then get me back home. A home I can’t even imagine now, don’t want to return to, because Ryan won’t be there.

I place my hands on either side of Ryan’s face and force him to look into my eyes. ‘What Luc will get is an illusion. When we reach Coronado Beach, “Mercy” will surrender herself to him.’

Ryan shakes his head in angry denial, but I turn from him to look at Michael. ‘But the moment Raphael is back safely with us and Luc places his hands upon that Mercy, there must be a shift,’ I say with quiet urgency. ‘A vast shift so that Luc’s forces see my face reflected in every direction. So disguised, our people must disperse across the landscape. In the chaos, I will leave.’

‘Merce …’ Ryan’s voice is low and anguished. ‘Put Luc back in his hole, Michael,’ I say wearily. ‘Repair some of the damage he’s done. The time for mere watching is past.’

Michael nods grimly.

Ryan releases me as if I’m radioactive. ‘I need to take a shower,’ he mutters. ‘I don’t feel clean.’ He leaves the room abruptly.

‘I’ll get the bikes,’ Richard says, hooking a sweater and a bunch of keys out of a duffle bag lying in one corner of the room. I hear his footsteps pound down the stairs, the bang of the front door opening and shutting.

I walk across to Uriel, look up into his face. ‘It must be you,’ I say, and he nods, then smiles.

‘Who else?’

He stares down at me for a moment with a quizzical expression, as if I’m a wondrous painting or a poem he must commit to memory.

‘His little joke,’ I remind him, and he shakes his head at me in mock exasperation. Then his outline seems to glow more brightly for a moment, before vaporising.

One by one, Jegudiel, Barachiel, Gabriel and Jeremiel do the same.

But Lauren throws herself in front of Michael before he can disappear, too.

She is shaking with fury as she cries, ‘Why didn’t you help me? If you can do this,’ she stabs her fingers at the air where the others were standing only seconds before, ‘why didn’t one of you save me?’ Tears spring out of her eyes, run down her cheeks. ‘You could have done it. Or put me out of my misery,’ she wails.

Michael bends and takes her clenched fists in his great hands, looks into her eyes from which the tears fall and fall.