ago. It’s the same entity, I’m sure of it. And the malakh is following me, for some reason only it knows.
Quid est nomen tuum? I think. Tell me your name.
‘Irina!’ Vladimir repeats. He steps forward and places one hand under my elbow, ushering me insistently towards the open car door so that I have no choice but to follow, though I continue searching the air, the sky, for that familiar, errant gleam.
Inside the car, Felipe’s mouth is smiling as he beckons me forward, but his eyes are cold with annoyance. ‘Senorita,’ he calls, leaning through the gap between the front seats with his smiling mouth and cold eyes. ‘Por favor, Senorita.’
The icy wind tears at my hair, at my clothes, as if insisting that I stay. And I want to stay outside on this steel-grey thoroughfare, under this steel-grey sky, with the temperature falling fast towards freezing. The cold has never bothered me. But I don’t see how I can, because there’s no freedom for Irina from these people who’ve been instructed never to let her out of their sight. I feel a stab of pity for her — even though she’s a bitch-slapping mess-in-a-dress. What else can you expect if you cage a wild animal?
Vladimir applies subtle pressure to the bones and nerves of my elbow. I’m leaning forward, placing one foot on the running board of the limo when I catch a glimpse of something else. It’s up on that roof across the way, the one outlined in glory. And though it feels as if Vladimir is crushing the bones of my arm to pieces, I dig in my impossible heels, and lift my head to look at it.
The moment I do, the faint, achy sensation — that hum I can feel way down in my bones — it all abruptly ceases. And time itself, the flesh-rending wind, the whole world around me — they all stand still. Because it’s not a light I’m seeing, up on that roof. Not a transient gleam. It’s a man’s shape. Broad-shouldered, long-limbed, perfectly proportioned, like something out of a classical painting, a living statue. He’s appeared so silently it’s as if he stepped out of that radiant cloud. There’s a corona all around him.
Even from where I’m standing, way down on the ground, I see that he has tawny, wide-set eyes — like the eyes of a young lion — and olive skin, long, dark gold hair. He’s wearing ordinary-looking street clothes: a long- sleeved grey and white plaid shirt over a white tee-shirt and blue jeans; a pair of battered, dark red Converse on his feet. There’s even a black satchel on his broad back, a beaten-up leather belt around his waist. But I know they’re all fake. Just props. He may look like a pitch-perfect human being in his late teens or early twenties, but he’s not human.
This guy in the ordinary clothes is standing on the stone pinnacle of a roof that’s about sixty feet off the ground. And he’s more beautiful than anything in creation has a right to be. He’s bound by light. It seems to come off his skin in shimmering waves of pure energy, as if he’s made of it. The gathering darkness can’t hide what he is.
He’s an archangel.
6
Te gnovi, I address the being upon the roof silently, as the malakh had once addressed me. I know you.
And I do. Forgotten all these years, but recalled in the beholding, as if scales have suddenly fallen from my eyes. He’s one of the archangels who rally to Michael’s bright presence. A lieutenant, if you like, loyal unto death. He’d stood with that shining multitude arrayed against me, against Luc, all those years ago, for reasons I can no longer remember, but want so badly to recall.
K’el. As I remember his name, something seems to ignite in me. The two worlds — one ‘real’ yet fallible, one unseen and infallible — converge once again in a single, watchful figure upon a distant roofline. Seeing him causes me an almost physical pain. I feel a wave of longing so intense that it’s like a kind of sickness. For home.
Where the great universe wheels and turns, and turns about. Where planets, stars, suns, moons, the greater and lesser bodies, fly by; comets, black holes, supernovae, strange fissures in time and space, twist and curl overhead like a painted, yet living, ever-changing dome.
I should be wary, I should be angry. K’el is in some way implicated in this, my banishment. But there’s something like giddiness, like glee, in my expression as I say his name again. I savour the sound, the feel and weight, of the word. It is an indictment of my peculiar … condition that I could have forgotten someone I once knew so well.
But there’s no answering joy in his face as he steps off the roof — sixty feet, at least, above the surface of the earth — and drifts weightlessly towards the ground, until he is standing across the street from me, disdain in his golden eyes.
You are betrayed, he says directly into my mind. And his voice is as chill and unwelcoming as the arctic wind that plagued Via Victor Hugo only moments ago. He comes for you and you must cleave to us, cleave to the Eight, else evil be given free reign and the war begin in earnest.
I step away from Irina’s limousine, away from the frozen figures of Vladimir and Angelo poised on the street like life-sized, plastic action figures, away from Felipe’s motionless form, still twisted towards me inside the vehicle, anger touching his aquiline features. Away, for a moment, from the trappings of Irina’s cosseted life.
I cross the street towards K’el, arms outstretched, as if I, too, am floating. Or sleepwalking.
I wonder whether he will let me touch him. The need to place my hands upon one who is my kin, my brethren, one who knew me as I was, who recognises me inside this stranger’s body, is so physical that I’m shaking with it.
I step up from the street’s irregular surface onto the footpath and it’s as if I hit an unseen wall of force. It’s immovable. When I push forward, seeking to pierce that seamless web of energy that surrounds him, there’s a crackle of intense blue-white light at the point where I make contact with his invisible armour, his deliberate shell. For an instant, there’s the sensation that I’m touching eternity, absolute power. And I must step back, or else Irina’s tender human skin will begin to burn.
I can go no further — he will let me get no closer — and the surge of disappointment I feel is like a spurt of acid in my heart.
We look upon each other, one foot of space all that separates us. It may as well be the width of a galaxy. He will not let me touch him, though his eyes seem strangely intent, almost hungry, as he looks upon my face.
‘No time for sentimentality, Mercy.’ His voice is acid, belying the luminosity of his gaze. ‘The universe no longer revolves around your wants or desires. Luc will soon be here. Despite all our best-laid plans — plans involving more time and more of us than a single being should ever warrant — he’s found you. Or one of his spies has. And now he hastens here to claim you. But we will not let it happen.’
Luc knows where I am? He’s coming here?
I stumble, almost fall, at the implication.
Immediately, the force-field that K’el has placed between us vanishes and he grips my wrist with his cool, steadying fingers. The gesture is telling: in some way, he must still remember me the way I was, he must still care.
I look down at his glowing hand upon Irina’s skin. And it’s like marble or alabaster, without flaw, smooth as fired glass or porcelain. Unlined on any surface. Uncorrupted and incorruptible. Though he’s touching me, I get no sense of what’s in his mind because his guard is up. He does not wish me to know.
As tall as Irina is, K’el is taller, constructed like a figure out of myth, looming over me, almost blocking out what remains of the weird half-light. I feel dwarfed and strangely frail in his glowing presence where once we were … equals.
And I cry, ‘Not one of you — not Uriel, not Gabriel, not even Luc — has ever told me why. Why can’t I be “claimed”? Why can’t I go home, when it’s what I want more than anything in this world? What has this elaborate plan — involving so much time, so many of “us” — all been for? I don’t understand, K’el. I don’t understand what came between us all to cause this rift. Weren’t we friends once, you and I?’
K’el gazes at me with his liquid gold, burning eyes, and I see something at war within him. He wants to tell me; but something — some stricture, some pronouncement, some fatal consequence — prevents him. And he’s
