Fury

of it had mattered to me then.

The way Raphael has tried to keep me alive all these years — all of it was motivated by love. Even if the way it all panned out felt like the opposite of love, felt like punishment.

‘Luc has hurt everyone I ever cared about,’ I say tautly. And I feel the muscles of Ryan’s body go rigid at my words.

Across the water, Luc roars, ‘Give her to me then you shall have your “brother”.’

He spits the word, throwing his right arm out like a barrier. Raphael cries out from behind him, held in place by some invisible force.

There is a ripple of movement amongst the ranks standing behind Michael, and from the very back of that shining throng comes … me. In robes of blazing white, my long dark hair hanging down my back, my arms and feet bare.

I see myself drift through the gathered angels towards Michael, see Michael place a hand upon my shoulder to halt me beside him.

‘Like for like,’ he bellows.

At Michael’s words, Luc lowers his right arm, causing Raphael to lurch into motion again.

He stumbles forward towards the false Mercy standing next to Michael, indescribable longing on his face. He falls to his knees, and looks up as if begging for forgiveness.

‘It was my fault you were sacrificed,’ he says. ‘You know I loved you beyond measure. You know that, more than once, I tried to win you from Luc, because I knew his true character — the one he hid from you. I knew how he sought to place himself higher than Michael, higher even than God. In desperation, I begged Michael to force Luc’s hand. Make a bargain with him, I urged. Get Luc to declare before us all what it is that he wants and let him believe he will have his way. But first, Luc had to give you up forever.

‘But Luc saw what moved me. If he could not have you, then neither could I. For exiling you when it was not within his province to do so, Luc was himself summarily exiled.’

Luc doomed me for millennia because he was jealous of Raphael. I let out a small whimper and Ryan grips me fiercely. I turn my face into the hard line of his body so that no one will see the tears — hot and bright — spilling down my face.

Raphael looks up at the being he thinks is me. ‘Forgive me,’ he pleads. ‘For I thought I was the truest friend you would ever have. I tried to save you — and in saving you, I damned you for centuries.’

I start to shake again in Ryan’s arms as I turn and gaze at Raphael in the distance. Love and loyalty lay at the heart of everything, but how dark and twisted a path grew from them.

Raphael lurches to his feet, moving into the space between Luc and Michael. ‘Return to your rightful place at my side,’ he begs. ‘Be with me. Let me somehow counterweigh the years, the suffering.’

Luc laughs derisively, the sound like steel on steel, ugly and grating, filling the skies.

I almost tear myself away from Ryan then and run, down towards Raphael’s bent and wounded figure. I want so desperately to hold him in my arms again and tell him not to speak of fault or blame; that I understand, and that I’m finally at peace with what was done to me. But I have to maintain the fiction, hold the line.

Uriel, wearing my face, says brusquely in my voice, ‘The choice is made, the bargain struck.’

And Raphael, hanging his head in grief, has no choice but to walk past me, to let me go.

But before Uriel can reach Luc and seize him, Gudrun steps forward and grabs him by the hand. The left hand.

Horror rises in me as I realise, even before Luc does, what she is doing.

‘Betrayal!’ Gudrun shrieks. ‘We are betrayed!’

She raises Uriel’s left hand high and Luc sees in an instant that it does not burn with an incandescent scar — for it does not burn at all.

Uriel’s disguise falls away and he is himself once more. For a moment — like an ache in time, a breath suspended — every soul upon that beach freezes.

Then Luc’s blazing weapon is in his hand and he plunges it towards Uriel’s chest before any of us can move or cry out. But Uriel is almost Luc’s equal in power — for he is counted second in strength only to the great Michael himself — and he throws himself sideways. Luc’s blade slices across his forearm, leaving a deep and blazing score, but it does not kill him. Then Uriel vaporises.

‘Where are you?’ Luc screams, scanning the beach wildly, and that terrible pain lashes me anew as he seeks a way in, a weakness, an opening. It feels as if I’m being torn apart from the inside, and then he begins to bellow: ‘H—’

24

The instant Luc begins to say my name, every angel on Coronado Beach, from lowest to highest, transfigures to resemble me. They scatter in every direction, flaming swords igniting in every hand. But in this whirl of white fire and movement, I fall to the ground, convulsing and helpless. For Luc is roaring my name, my true name, again and again.

Ryan curses and scoops me up into his arms.

I hear Richard gasp, ‘Move, chicos. Move or die,’ and get a dim sense of him and Lauren running and stumbling for their lives.

Ryan hauls me towards the motorbike we left parked further up the beach. The air resounds with the crack of blade meeting blade, the sizzle of holy fire meeting its polar opposite. Over and over, I catch glimpses of myself everywhere — my face, my dark eyes, my long, straight hair, my strong-limbed form. It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake from: seeing myself flee and fall, fight and die, time and again, in a howl of vaporising energy.

I’m sobbing uncontrollably from the horror as Ryan throws me onto the bike, then guns the engine, not bothering with the helmets, shouting at me to hold on. I clasp my arms around him from behind, press my tear-streaked face against the back of his battered jacket as we take the stairs at full throttle.

I know I shouldn’t look back, but I do, and I’m so overwhelmed by what I see that I almost let go of Ryan, almost fall. Every single angel does battle in my name. Every demon battles me. I have been a legend, a pariah, a lost cause, for many, many years, yet many of my brethren make the ultimate sacrifice to protect me.

I can’t stop my left hand flaming into life the way Uriel’s never could have, and the wound that Luc gave me all those years ago burns so brightly, so fiercely, that Ryan cries out as he catches sight of it wrapped around him, almost losing control of the bike as we crest the hill.

As we speed past the trees, the rain starts again, obliterating the world around us.

At the crossroads, Richard pulls up alongside Ryan and screams, ‘Where to now?’

I gesture left, indicating the gates we passed on our way here what feels like a lifetime ago. Richard nods, and roars off up the coastal highway towards the abandoned military installation, Ryan and me following.

At the gates, Richard jumps off his bike and fumbles open the black bag clipped to the back. He digs through the jumble of human weaponry stashed inside it and takes out a pair of boltcutters, slices open the chains that keep the gates closed against trespassers.

It’s some kind of abandoned airbase. There’s a vast expanse of cracked tarmac beyond a row of identical houses to our left, their front doors riddled with bullet holes. Long grass has overtaken a lot of the land. In the distance, through the pounding rain, I can make out an iron jetty that extends into the water; concrete bunkers built into some of the hills overlooking the sea. There are a couple of large, rusting steel hangars each with a double band of broken windows running around the walls and loudspeakers mounted in groups of three on the roof.

We ride up to the first of them, and Richard dismounts and studies the sliding doors for a moment before simply pushing one of them open. Then we’re inside. The sound of the rain upon the steel roof is very loud.