her body, instead of eight. And now there are only six, and I suddenly find myself able to speak Spanish and Russian, when before I could recall speaking only English. And Latin — the language of empire builders, slave masters, ecclesiasts.
And Selaphiel taken also? I can’t believe anyone could wish him ill.
‘What happened, K’el?’ I ask, shaken. ‘What really happened that last day I stood among you all with Luc by my side?’
Again, I recall Luc and I at the epicentre of something vast, a conflagration waiting to happen, an ache in time, a breath suspended. The Eight arrayed against us, weapons of power raised, a shining multitude gathered behind them. Behind Luc and me, another shining multitude. Two halves of a people that had once been whole and united. I remember Luc’s defiance, though not its rationale. He’d spoken of faith and goodwill, made an act of barter, or surrender. And in that instant, I’d felt a searing pain in my left hand, and the world had gone blank and white, and all my memories had shattered like glass.
I find myself absently flexing the fingers of my left hand, like a street fighter who has already thrown a punch and connected.
‘Please,’ I beseech K’el in a low voice. ‘Tell me.’
K’el shakes his head as he looks down at my upturned face, lays the back of one hand briefly against my cheek. ‘You don’t remember because some part of you doesn’t wish to remember. It’s self preservation. We were all there — all the elohim, the malakhim, the powers, dominions, seraphim, all of us. It’s no secret what happened; there’s no reason we would hide it from you. Everything you want to know is still there, inside you.’
Always the same answer.
Red rage flares in me and I pound K’el’s broad chest with Irina’s thin fists. ‘Tell me!’ I scream. ‘Tell me!’
He stands there, unmoved, beneath the sharp rain of blows. ‘Unlike you, unlike Luc,’ he murmurs, ‘I’m no liar. I have no talent for it. So I’m not going to tell you, because I would never sugar coat such a terrible truth. And it would hurt you to hear it again, maybe even unhinge you. Search within yourself for the knowledge, but beware of what you see there. It may be your undoing.’
He releases me then, cupping Irina’s face — my face — in a gesture so tender it seems almost final. And I remember, with a sudden, shocking clarity, that K’el had truly loved me, perhaps as much as Raphael had done. How could I have forgotten it? He had hoped I would choose him for my own. And yet I’d taken delight in tormenting him with my preference for Luc.
‘If I had to rank you at all,’ I remember taunting K’el, ‘you wouldn’t even place.’ And I’d laughed.
I close my eyes briefly in shame. I recall the way K’el had watched me. He’d been like a lost dog, always at my heels. Ever hopeful, hopeless. Something Luc had never been.
K’el gives me a crooked smile as he takes in my expression of remorse. ‘In many ways, Irina Zhivanevskaya reminds me a lot of how you used to be. Wild, self-centred, spiteful. Beautiful beyond belief. Though you’ve somehow convinced Raphael, Gabriel, even Uriel, that you’ve changed for the better. Maybe even me.’
He lays a warning finger on my lips when he sees a new question forming there.
‘After this life,’ he says quietly, ‘Nuriel will be your watcher and you’ll no longer be my concern — at least until the next time Michael calls on me to take up the burden. And no doubt there will be a next time. I don’t think he’s ever going to let me forget you — call it my penance.’
He turns away, as if preparing to vanish back into whatever vortex he stepped out of. I’m so afraid he’ll leave me that I say the first thing that comes into my head to make him stay.
‘I don’t even know my name,’ I wail softly. ‘You didn’t even leave me that much.’
He turns back to face me, arrested by my question, and I catch a fleeting expression cross his face before his guard goes up again.
But that expression had been enough.
In poker you’d call it a tell, which is funny, because that’s exactly what he’d been debating. Tell her? Don’t tell her?
And I’m staggered that he’d even show weakness that way. How did I get so good at reading him, when I never was before?
‘Oh, you have a name, Mercy,’ he says ruefully. ‘Like me, like the Eight, the name of God is woven into its very fabric. It’s …’
When he utters it, my real name, my mind fills with a sudden, terrible screeching, as if some unfathomable chasm housing the soul of every person damned since the time of the Fall itself has suddenly opened in my head; as if Hell itself has somehow become lodged in there.
I am the only still point in a spinning, screaming world.
I fall to my knees, sweating and shaking, as if my own name has become a weapon with the power to slay me. Then, just as suddenly, there’s silence.
I can barely lift my head to focus on K’el’s glorious countenance so far above mine. I’m sure he’s seeing abject horror in my eyes.
‘Raphael called it “the last defence”,’ K’el murmurs, extending a luminous hand to help me back onto my feet. ‘He said that if all else failed and you fell into the hands of the daemonium, they’d be unable to find any trace of your true identity inside you. Your name’s so well hidden that only Raphael himself has the power to restore it to you.’
He regards me with his dark gold eyes, as if he’s memorising every line of my face, before releasing me. ‘Remember, if you see Luc? Just walk away like I’m doing now, but don’t look back. And don’t try to leave Milan before the six get here, because I’ll find you.’
Then he turns and moves swiftly away down the street, towards the distant outline of the Duomo, head down, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his worn-in blue jeans. And it may be a trick of the light, but as I watch, he seems to grow smaller, to somehow scale down to mortal size, so that from the back he might actually be what he appears to be — a pitch-perfect human boy in nondescript clothing.
Without warning, the giant storm front breaks.
And though I can see in the dark like a cat, can see for miles, through sunshine or moonlight, rain or fog, though I rake Via Victor Hugo with my desperate eyes, the one who watches over me is suddenly no longer there, vanished like smoke. And there’s only the torrential, blinding rain.
7
I scream into the icy, driving rain, rain like needles, like nails, ‘K’el! K’el! I’m so sorry!’
Sorry that I didn’t love you enough; could never love you the way you wanted me to love you.
But there’s no answer; only thunder like rolling war drums in the sky. Rain fills my mouth, and, though I was not formed to cry tears, I can feel them, hot and stinging, as they run down Irina’s cheeks. They mingle with the water streaming down her face.
Time has recommenced again and the whole world around me, and I am drenched through in seconds, barely able to lift my head or open my eyes against the fearsome onslaught of the unnatural, keening wind, the vicious rain. The thunder is so loud now, it sounds like cannon fire. Lightning suddenly splits the skyline, briefly illuminating the now empty rooftop on which K’el had first appeared.
Luc is coming. He’s on his way, that small voice whispers inside me, my inner demon.
This is only the beginning.
I can almost feel Luc’s anger in the air all around. And there’s that sense — as there always was when Luc was near — of terrible anticipation, excitement, at what he might do. Luc, who never toed any line, who questioned every received wisdom and, for better or worse, taught me to be that way, too. Luc, who blazed brighter than any of us. Rules had neither impressed nor bound him. I’d loved that about him — that he was different; that he recognised no bounds; that he was a risk taker.
And though I love Luc as much as I love the idea of freedom, all I am feeling now is fear. I want to stay, but I want to run, too. Because those of the Eight that remain won’t simply let Luc take me. Someone I know,
