I don’t look at my golden beloved, who has finally run me to ground after all these years.
I don’t look at Ryan, whose life may now be counted in minutes, in mere seconds.
I hear K’el’s voice in my head again, saying: Not for us, that ‘lifelong partnership’ that’s said to unite mortal woman and mortal man in heart, in mind, in body. We are elohim, Mercy.
Not for me, then, the fate of the happy bride.
I suddenly spot something in the back row, to my right. A cloud of light building about the head and neck of a short, paunchy, balding human male. The light seems to grow in density, it begins to coalesce. And K’el seems to step backwards out of the body in which he’d been disguised, the human slumping forward suddenly in his chair, as if he’s asleep.
K’el takes up position in front of one of the giant video screens, as five others, all over the room, do the same — pull themselves free of the human hosts they’d hidden themselves in, coalescing and assuming their customary forms. All of them are male and, to my eyes, all are luminescent.
They position themselves equidistantly, three behind Luc, three behind Ryan. Six archangels. All lethal, all familiar, all beautiful.
It begins.
The humans in this vast space are so busy looking at me that they haven’t registered the six of them faintly silhouetted against the chaotic wall of ever-changing video screens. From beneath my downswept lashes I recognise Gabriel, Uriel and Barachiel on Ryan’s side of the room; Jeremiel, K’el and Michael on Luc’s side.
Something seems to leap in me when I see them all, gathered together. My people, my brethren, once like brothers to me.
I can actually see them. I am permitted to gaze upon them. For now, I am part of their world again.
Gabriel inclines his head at me in greeting, while Uriel scowls — exactly the way I would. Barachiel’s face is expressionless, as I knew it would be given our history together; we were always too alike for comfort. Jeremiel regards me steadily with his silver gaze. K’el looks down, away from me, and Michael’s black gaze seems to burn holes in the very air between us.
But something’s wrong. Raphael and Selaphiel I knew to be missing, but where is Jegudiel?
K’el is a stand-in for the missing, I realise suddenly, but he’s nowhere near as powerful as any of the Eight.
And Nuriel?
What has Luc done to her?
As I sweep onto the platform, into that space between them all, time stands still. Time, and the world, and everything in it.
‘You’re too late,’ Luc says smoothly, standing suddenly and turning towards Michael behind him.
Gudrun rises with him. Her hand is on his arm, his hand over hers protectively. My eyes narrow as I see something that hadn’t been apparent to me until now. They’re a couple. They’re actually together.
That roaring returns, that darkness rises in me, and for a moment I feel again as if I’ve lost my hold on the physical world. I have no place, no centre, no anchor. I am rage, I am pain. I’m freefalling.
I step towards Luc, swept by a sudden, incandescent fury at his betrayal. I throw the corny bridal bouquet at the back of his head and it disappears, turned to ash as it touches him. It’s such a mortal, puny gesture. I have no weaponry. I’m defenceless against my anguish.
‘How could you?’ I shriek, and he turns. ‘You just … replaced me? When? When did this happen? Recently? Or the second I was exiled?’
I don’t catch them moving, but Jeremiel, K’el and Michael are suddenly closer to us, moving through the still forms of all the humans now frozen, mid-whistle, mid-applause, like mannequins themselves. I’m sure that, behind me, Gabriel, Uriel and Barachiel have done the same, started closing that shark net in which I am the live bait.
They were never going to shift me first, I realise suddenly. They were always going to wait until they’d drawn Luc here. That, too, makes me furious — to be used in such a way.
Something dangerous flashes in his ice-blue eyes. ‘I don’t need to explain myself to you,’ Luc snarls at me. ‘When you left, you took everything from me; you ruined my life in that instant. Everything changed. Because of you, I’ve been trapped on this earth, caged like an animal, for centuries. Gudrun has made the intervening age,’ he spits the word, ‘significantly less of a trial.’
Gudrun looks up at me with open hostility in her bright, sapphire eyes and I recoil as Luc pulls her closer. They’re so obviously made for each other, such a matched set, that I wonder how he ever could have thought I was the one. Does he love and desire her the way he claimed to have loved and desired me?
For a moment, I’m so disoriented I stumble and almost fall.
I look nothing like her. I have none of the easy charm she displays around people. She’s my opposite in almost every way. Compliant. Womanly. So clearly not Luc’s equal, and nor does she strive to be.
And she’s no archangel, I realise suddenly, despite her luminous beauty. She might have been, once. But no longer. Not for a long time. But what is she now?
Gudrun places one hand on the fussy silk bow at the throat of her high-necked blouse and actually growls at me. Like a panther. I rock back on my heels, my horror etched on my face.
‘I warned you,’ Gabriel interjects, his voice steely. ‘You have little idea of how much your “beloved” has changed. He is not the one you remember. Stand aside, Mercy. Let it all end here. Let us deal with Luc as he should be dealt with. And when it is done, you will be free to go where you wish, be who you wish. We will no longer have any claim over you and you will no longer pose a threat to the order of anything, anywhere.’
When I stand there, still transfixed with shame and fury and envy by the sight of Luc with the bombshell he replaced me with, Gabriel says more gently, ‘Soror.’ Sister. I look down at him.
‘Turn away. Cover your eyes. And when we are done and gone, get that boy safely home.’
Gabriel raises his hand and I turn to follow it, and see Ryan, his seated, frozen form, his eyes fixed on the empty air where I’d been standing only seconds before. There’s that look in his eyes. Of love. For me. Captured there for all to witness.
Horror rises up in me again. Gabriel’s right. Ryan will always be vulnerable to those of our kind who wish him harm. I need to get him out of here.
I nod to show that I’ve understood, and back away from Luc’s achingly familiar, achingly beautiful form, all my dreams of him, of home, of our secret garden, like ashes now, too.
‘That’s it?’ Luc throws back his head and laughs. ‘You think I’m afraid of you six? K’el is no substitute for the great Raphael — who was not easy to subdue, I’ll admit. He’s no substitute even for that weakling Selaphiel. As for Nuriel? We have her, and we’ll keep her for as long as we deem it necessary. She’s not particularly … comfortable, but she’s still alive. If barely.’
I see Gabriel and Uriel exchange worried glances.
Luc laughs again, and his voice has a ringing, grating edge to it that makes me want to clap my hands over my ears in pain. ‘Which means you stay exactly where you are, Mercy. You and I are nowhere near finished.’
I can’t summon any words of defiance. Truly, all I have left are feelings. While I somehow manage to find the strength to hold Luc’s gaze, I am being slowly torn apart inside, as if by wolves.
I feel Gabriel leap lightly onto the platform beside me. He places a strong hand upon my back, and from it flows the strength to defy the one whom I would have died for. Years ago, aeons.
‘We are finished,’ I tell Luc bitterly. ‘I don’t recognise you, and I don’t want to know who you’ve become. I’ve wasted enough time holding out hope that we’d be together again, the way we used to be. This is the point where I get out of the frame, at long last. You disgust me.’
I’m turning away from him, from them all, when Luc suddenly calls out my name. My true name. And I wrap my arms around my head in agony.
It’s like I’m the only still point in a spinning, screaming world, and I fall to my knees, sweating and shaking, my own name a weapon of absolute control.
As I fall forward onto the runway — deaf and blind to everything except the shattering noises in my head — the entire room comes alive around us.
It only takes seconds for people to register the eight shining beings gathered around my prone form on the catwalk, growing in stature right before our eyes, becoming giants until they tower over everyone present. Become
