that we have met before, many times — in Madrid, in Berlin, Paris. It’s good, no? Powerful. Exactly what you wanted. I give you what you want, now you give me what I want …’
It feels as if I’m having a heart attack. Everything’s hurting me — the light, the air on my skin, even the sound of Felipe’s voice is grating and unpleasant. My jaws are clenched so tightly together that I can’t open my mouth to speak.
I’ve never known if it’s truly possible for me to die in a body I’ve soul-jacked, but this may be it. Together, Irina and I seem to be bursting into flame, and none of the Eight is here to witness it. There’s no one here to save me, because the Eight are under attack themselves — a thing so unthinkable, so brazen, I can still scarcely believe it. And K’el, my watcher, had walked away as if he never wanted to see me again.
My vision is blurring, growing dark at the edges, and I close my eyes.
I hear a male voice complain lightly: ‘I wish you’d just enjoy the ride. You have access to wealth, material things, experiences that no ordinary human being could ever hope for. You should be revelling in everything that’s on offer. The ability simply to be, to abandon oneself to human pleasure, is something our kind could learn from. In a way, I envy you. I really do. I find the act of possession too … messy. I leave that to others. But it does mean that I … miss out.’
I open my eyes with difficulty to see Luc seated opposite me, his elbows resting on the armrests, his long fingers steepled together. I’m hit by a freak wave of shock and longing. When I see him like this, there are no doubts. He is the one. No one could ever compare. How could anyone look at him and not love him?
But I can’t speak, can’t even move. Everything I’m feeling is in my eyes. Adoration, terror, pain.
Luc sees me watching him and smiles, saying softly, ‘Hello, my love.’
And I think that maybe I have died. And this is my reward.
His ruffled golden hair is shorter than I remember it, and there’s a sexy hint of stubble along his jawline. He’s wearing a sharp, narrow-cut, single-breasted, three-piece navy suit with a thin navy pinstripe running through the weave, which emphasises his snake-hipped, broad-shouldered, long and lean form. He’s paired it with a snowy-white shirt with French cuffs, two large and faceted sapphires set in gold for cufflinks, one at each wrist. At his neck is a Windsor-knotted striped tie in iridescent colours, like the sheen on a dragonfly’s wings. Socks in a discreet grey-on-grey herringbone pattern; black leather lace-up brogues. There’s a folded pair of aviator sunglasses with reflective lenses in the top pocket of his jacket. He couldn’t look more perfect in his pitch-perfect human clothes.
Beyond him, I see that Felipe is turning to say something else to me, but I can’t hear the words. It’s obvious that he doesn’t see Luc, because as he throws out his left hand, it seems to pass straight through Luc’s left shoulder.
‘H …’ I gag.
I’m trying to say: How? But also, I think: Help me.
Because Irina’s body is spinning out of control. There’s too much light, too much heat inside the car, inside us. I’m going blind. I’m a house of cards on the brink of tumbling down. Everything inside her, inside me, is simultaneously speeding up and shutting down.
It’s a horrible way to die. And I wonder if she can feel it, if she knows. If she’s frightened the way that I’m frightened.
Irina collapses across the back seat and I go down, too, powerless to stop it; the two of us so inextricably entwined in the throes of some terrible opiate I don’t even have a name for.
Luc’s pale eyes narrow as he studies us sprawled here, but he doesn’t reach out, and I’m pierced by a sorrow so intense that a dull ache, a remembered pain, begins to build in the fingers of my left hand, the hand that last held his.
Luc is here. K’el wasn’t lying. But why won’t Luc touch me?
‘It’s only taken you by surprise because it’s such a pure and concentrated dose. You need to focus,’ Luc says, and his voice is curiously urgent though his body language is still detached, distant. ‘You should be doing more to control the outcome. Just because it’s synthetic doesn’t mean it must simply be surrendered to. Science is there to be countered. We were here before it, we’ll be here long after it’s gone. You need to pull away from her. You know how to do it. I know you do.’
How … Wide-eyed and stricken, I can’t even finish the thought.
‘This is no dream,’ Luc replies, and I hear a strange tension in his voice. ‘You’re in that waking state of paralysis between death and life that mimics the conditions of sleep. I can see you, even speak with you, across time, across great distance, but I can’t help you because I’m not really here. I’m just an expectation, a forward projection, if you like. I’m not going to reach you soon enough to salvage that body you’re in. If Irina’s idiot driver spiked her drink with enough liquid meth to stop her heart, it’s up to you to bring the girl back. I’ve shown you how it’s done in your dreams. And I know that you’ve done it before — how else did you escape Paul Stenborg? When, if you’d stayed, I would’ve found you. We would already be together.’
I frown, trying to make sense of all he’s saying.
‘You need to stop looking to other people for answers,’ he snaps. ‘Be assured that your “confinement” will soon be over — I’ll see to it. And I’ll personally destroy every one of our kind that has ever had a hand in keeping you from me, that’s a promise.’
The terrible anger I see in his eyes only seems to make him burn brighter, make his beauty even more piercing. And it reminds me how alive he always made me feel. Around him, everything always seemed hyper- bright, hyper-real, better than it actually was.
‘I’ll move Heaven and earth for you,’ Luc insists harshly. ‘But you have to keep Irina alive. Then I’ll take over. With you by my side, everything becomes possible again. I expect you to be in Milan, waiting for me. If she dies, I lose you again. Don’t let me lose you again. Not now, when everything is in readiness for you, my queen.’ He leans forward, his gaze fever-bright. ‘Do you think you can do what I ask? It’s such a simple thing, Mercy.’
When he says the word, the false name I have given myself, his defences come down for a moment, and I’m stung by what I see in his eyes. Sure, there’s affection there, even love. But nothing like it used to be; there’s no heat.
There’s doubt, too, and fury. Exasperation, desperation, disappointment, a dark and voracious need. And I can’t reconcile any of it before Luc’s gaze grows unreadable again.
His voice is low and insistent. ‘When you see me again, when I am actually before you, you must fly to my side. Come to me. Only then will you be safe. Flee the Eight and their legion at whatever cost. But if I should somehow fail,’ his beautiful mouth tightens ominously, ‘then locate that human boy and return with him to the place where he lives, to Paradise.’ He spits the word. ‘He, too, will play a part in the final reckoning, when all debts due and owing to me shall be met in full and repaid in blood.’
There’s a jump-cut moment — like a break in transmission — where I imagine for a moment that Luc’s outline wavers. Then he abruptly dissolves out of being, and it’s Felipe behind the wheel, chuckling almost to himself.
‘So, chica, what are you going to give me, eh? What will you give me to keep the channels open?’
Irina’s body goes rigid, and I know I should be working out how to fix her, fix us. But all I feel is a paralysing fear. Luc called me my love, as he always has, but something rang false. His mouth had said one thing, but his eyes …
It’s the same kind of fear that used to strike me when we lay alone together in the secret garden he’d conjured for me out of thin air, out of wishes and longing. As I’d watched him sleep, I used to think: What if, one day, he discovers I’m not good enough, that he doesn’t want me any more? I’ve survived so many things. But I couldn’t survive that.
Irina’s body convulses again, and I wonder dazedly how it is that she can sense my pain.
8
A man’s voice suddenly emerges from a speaker set into the dashboard of the car, drawing me back to the present against my will.
‘How far?’ snaps the voice in Italian-accented English.
