Fury

As the others take off their helmets, I say, ‘This is the place. For me, time stops here.’

Ryan turns and looks at me, his heart in his eyes. Lauren takes one look at her brother’s face and drags Richard away, to give us space. They clutch each other tightly by the hangar doors as Ryan closes his arms around me fiercely.

I shift, one last time, so that he’s looking at me. And I whisper, ‘I told you once how miraculous you are: that you were somehow able to find me and love me when I had no face of my own, no body. From life to life you’ve been my rock, my friend, my protector, my constant. You were right when you said I’d never find anyone like you, or what we have, anywhere else. You’ve been my solace and my greatest joy, and I love you, Ryan Daley, and I thank you. And I will always, always miss you and be thinking of you until “some day” comes.’

He tips his head back in that way I’ve come to recognise: as if he can somehow rein in strong emotion, hold back his tears.

I lean up and pull his mouth down to mine and kiss him, as the wind shrieks through the catwalks and steel beams crisscrossing the space above our heads. Then he’s kissing my face, my eyes, pulling me into him, weeping into my shining hair, his strong, lean body racked by the strength of his feeling.

‘Touching,’ a voice drawls, ‘but ultimately pointless.’

Ryan and I freeze in horror as we see Luc outlined against the back windows of this empty, dusty space, Gudrun beside him. A dozen of his strongest fallen are ranged around them.

Luc walks forward, his long, luminous robes open to the waist to display his preternatural shining beauty to its best advantage, that scar that burns in the centre of his chest. The sight of him makes me recoil, causes me to stumble backwards.

‘Seen from the air, your telltale scar such as we all wear,’ he gestures around him at his faithful, ‘cannot be disguised.’

Gabriel, Michael and Uriel materialise behind Ryan and me, wings outspread, flaming swords raised before them.

‘You’re already too late,’ Luc roars, surging forward to grasp my left hand, wrenching me out of Ryan’s grasp.

At Luc’s touch, the flames grow brighter, flare higher, and I cry out in agony.

‘She is mine,’ Luc snarls. ‘I made her what she is. She is my chattel, my possession, my slave once more, and I will do with her as I will.’

Ryan starts forward, but Gudrun swiftly bars his way, planting a long, red-painted fingernail in the centre of his chest. ‘So pretty,’ she purrs.

‘But a hindrance,’ Luc snaps, releasing me suddenly.

Before I even see him move, he is gripping Ryan by the front of his throat. He plunges his other hand into Ryan’s chest as if he would pull Ryan’s soul free of his living body and devour it before us all.

‘NO!’ Lauren and I scream together.

Ryan convulses and falls to the floor at Luc’s feet, looks up at me, wide-eyed, struggling to breathe.

Luc lets his hand fall back to his side. ‘Your entire life has been for nothing,’ he sneers as he looks down at Ryan, twitching and shuddering on the floor. ‘Someone as worthless and powerless as you are could never hope to hold onto a being like her. Soon, I will end her life,’ he indicates me. ‘And hers, too,’ he gestures at Lauren, ‘the way it should have ended inside that monster’s dungeon.’

He laughs as he sees all the life, the colour, flowing from Ryan’s face like the receding tide.

He turns and looks at me. ‘The moment we quit this accursed place forever, everything becomes possible for me again. Everything. We have been too long apart, my love. Look at me. Take my hand.’

His voice is so full of dark seduction that I almost forget where we are; that we are no longer those two lovers who lay entwined in a bower of flowers, vowing eternal love for each other. He holds his hand out to me as if whole centuries have not come between us, as if he doesn’t bear the blood of millions upon it.

I back away from him, my burning left hand held up between us in a gesture of negation, screaming, ‘Azraeil! Azraeil!’

There is no sound but the harsh rattle of Ryan’s breath inside his chest, the sound of him dying. Luc has stopped time to let me hear Ryan die, to watch him die. His life is ebbing away at my feet. I feel it the way I felt it within the Duomo. The light of his dark eyes is failing; he has no strength even to tell me he loves me, and to say goodbye.

I scream again into the echoing space, ‘Azraeil! I know you want him, he’s one of yours, you’ve marked him for your own. Azraeil!’

‘Azraeil is in the business of listening to and helping no one,’ Luc taunts.

He gestures at Gudrun, at dead-eyed, auburn-haired Hakael beside her. ‘Keep them all back,’ he orders. ‘Once I take her beyond the boundaries of this vile planet, do as you will with all of them; do your worst.’

But then a sudden wreath of fog, a fine silver mist, twines rapidly across the floor. It coils around Luc’s ankles, and he leaps back from it, cursing God.

When Azraeil materialises between us, clad in his customary black, there’s actual fear on Luc’s face, for even Death takes precedence over evil. Death is a power unto itself.

I fall to the ground beside Ryan and cradle his head in my hands, weeping tears of bitter light.

‘Give him back to me,’ I beg Azraeil brokenly, ‘for he goes beyond my power. I have no power to heal a mortal wound dealt by Lucifer himself.’

Azraeil looks at me measuringly with eyes as blue as the daytime sky. ‘You hold free will in such regard, sister,’ he says quietly. ‘If it were to come down to a choice, who would you be for?’ He indicates Luc, then Michael, with his eyes. ‘Choose correctly and the mortal lives; incorrectly, and he dies. It is a gamble, as all life is. I am in a wagering mood today.’

‘Why make me choose, why test me with riddles, when this good man lies dying?’ I sob. ‘He is my love, and I will never find his like again, not in any life, yet you ask me to choose between two warring houses that shall never agree a peace, not until the other is utterly destroyed?’

‘Choose,’ Azraeil says in a steely, ringing voice. ‘And choose wisely because the world turns on your decision; though your choice has always been pre-ordained.’

‘Nothing is predetermined, pre-ordained!’ I cry brokenly. ‘How could that single heinous act of Luc’s — of casting me down — mean that Ryan must die? The human world and the celestial world will always be spheres that operate independently, that only ever briefly collide from time to time. We are just random acts to them, Azraeil, like the Ebola virus, or a nuclear bomb dropped from the sky on a clear day. Random, unpredictable, rare; so often destructive. They exercise free will as much as we do. Ryan chose me,’ I sob. ‘When he could have chosen safety, normality, life.’

‘But we are the highest beings in creation,’ Azraeil parries. ‘Weren’t we created to do God’s will? Are we not God’s will? How could this man even presume to “choose” you?’

‘We were formed,’ I cry. ‘We are acts of God in living form, mere instruments of His power, as senseless and directed as every mortal upon this earth. We are the same …’ I weep. ‘Underneath it all, we are the same. There is no fate, Azraeil, only coincidence. I have lived as a human for millennia. Nothing is predetermined. It is all chaos, and from it you must wrest your life. You make your own fate. You see the cards that you are dealt, and you play them, as they come, you play them.’

‘Choose,’ Azraeil says quietly, implacably.

I raise my burning eyes to him.

‘Then, before God,’ I cry, ‘before all here assembled, I reject you all.’ I turn to Luc. ‘You, Lucifer!’ I spit. ‘I reject you utterly. And you, Michael! I reject the rigid determinism that you espouse. And even you, Azraeil: I reject Death. I refuse to choose sides. I choose him, I choose Ryan, and a life lived in simplicity and goodness that hurts no one. That is what I choose.’

Azraeil kneels and wrests Ryan from my arms, and I cannot hold onto him, though I claw and weep and plead.