disperses.
K’el’s still looking down at the wound in his side when Luc moves forward suddenly, grabbing him by the throat with his left hand, forcing his head up with the tip of the long, burning dagger he’s now holding in his right. Before I can speak or even raise my hand, Luc hisses, ‘And the Devil always gets what he wants,’ and cuts K’el’s throat in one smooth arc from ear to ear.
I scream as K’el’s head falls back and the light leaves his beautiful eyes. His form seems to waver, grows unbearably bright for an instant. Then, without a sound, his energy simply vanishes, dispersing, never to return.
I begin to shake. There are no words to express my horror, my grief. K’el was singular, and perfect, and no one like him will ever be made again.
Luc subsumes his weapon into the palm of his hand. ‘Time presses,’ he says caustically. ‘Take my hand willingly and live. Or die — it is all one. Your soul is mine; I’ll claim it either way.’
He holds his hand out to me, palm upward, and I stare at him blankly. Unable to move, unable to believe that he expects me to take the hand that just destroyed K’el.
He makes a snarling sound in the back of his throat and moves forward. But before he can reach out and take hold of me, I catch a fleeting movement behind him.
‘Merce, get back!’ Ryan cries, and he throws something at Luc’s back then vaults clear of the runway.
An arc of clear, strong-smelling accelerant hits Luc squarely and goes up with a roar. Flames rise at least twenty feet into the air. Luc just starts to laugh. He is truly horrifying to behold. He could douse the fire in an instant, but instead he lets it take hold of him, his whole form burning, and within that blazing outline I glimpse all those things he once showed me — cruelty, perversity, death and destruction — on such a grand scale that I scream and look away.
I see Ryan gesturing at me from the ground, from beyond the burning catwalk, telling me with his hands, his eyes, to go to him. And I shake my head at him in wordless horror, wanting him to run, to get as far away from me as possible if he wants to live. He deserves so much more than I could ever offer him. If he stays with me, he will be hunted down ruthlessly, like a dog. I know it.
Luc suddenly rises high into the air, arms outspread, still burning, still laughing, and ignites his long sword, ready for the killing blow.
‘No mercy for you,’ he roars, pointing his weapon at Ryan, at me. ‘No mercy.’
But then a light of such blinding beauty and magnitude that even Luc must cover his eyes fills the interior of the Galleria, sending a beacon through the glass-roofed dome into the troubled skies above.
‘Flee!’ I hear the Archangel Michael cry. ‘Fly.’
As he says the word, the arched roof of the Galleria seems to shimmer, then more elohim — twelve in all — drift down through the solid canopy of glass and iron in a cruciform configuration, soaring straight towards Luc.
The blinding light extinguishes and I don’t hesitate, I leap through the flames towards Ryan, moving easily, with a fierce sense of joy and purpose as if Luc’s acts of betrayal have finally freed me. And Ryan closes his arms around me tightly, resting his chin briefly atop my head so that I close my eyes at the familiar, longed for gesture. The pain in my left hand seems to burn out, though not the pain in my heart. K’el hadn’t stood a chance.
‘You feel so real,’ Ryan murmurs, looking into my eyes.
‘I am real,’ I reply. ‘And you can’t know how good this feels.’
I search his face. ‘But we have to move, Ryan. It’s not safe for us here.’
My sight is unerring though the darkness is lit only by fire now, by lightning. The Galleria looks as if an inland tsunami has swept through it, the ground strewn with chairs and video equipment, the bodies of the mortal fallen. As I look up at the knots of elohim and daemonium struggling and grappling in the air, I see Luc swiftly put his blade through one of Michael’s reinforcements. The eloah’s energy disperses soundlessly as she dies, and another of her brethren engages Luc immediately.
I hear K’el’s voice in my head. We maintain, they destroy. That’s roughly how it works.
I grasp Ryan’s shirt in my hand and pull him around to face the south entrance. As we start to move, Luc’s voice penetrates the vast space from above. ‘I want them all.’
Suddenly, Gudrun blocks our way, a new, more deadly weapon in her hand. A long, twisted, flaming blade, guaranteed to cause maximum damage on entry and exit.
When Ryan and I pivot towards the western axis, another demon stands before us. Another to the east. Those that are not bent on subduing the archangels who still live, move forward to block our way. Some are male, some are female. All their scars burn brightly, no matter how they might shift to disguise them.
I embrace Ryan tightly, feeling all his unspoken terror in the hard muscles of his arms, his torso, through his familiar, beaten-up leather jacket.
Michael bellows again, his voice disembodied, desperate: ‘Fly, Mercy, fly.’
Then he seems to address Ryan directly. ‘Guard her, human.’ Michael’s voice sounds throughout the vast Galleria like a tolling bell. ‘Keep her safe in your human world when we cannot.’
Ryan gives me a hard shake. ‘Can you do that?’ he says urgently. ‘Fly?’
I can’t bring myself to answer him, just continue to watch, transfixed, as the reinforcements Michael has called here struggle to turn the tide of battle. Though the daemonium are roughly the equal of the elohim in number, they are extraordinarily vicious. As if they have been denied the chance to stretch their wings, to test their might, until now. One by one the elohim begin to go down. Each one singular and perfect, never to be made again.
Ryan is still shaking me insistently. ‘Mercy, can you? Can you fly? You’ve got no wings.’
‘Don’t need wings,’ I whisper. ‘But I don’t know if I can. It’s been too … long.’
I know now where my fear of heights comes from. When I recall that moment when Luc cast me out, cast me down, I feel that same terror all over again, the sensation of falling, the blinding, terrible impact. To know your enemy is to have some measure of control over that enemy — that was something Luc taught me, a long time ago. But I have no control over this fear. It seems boundless.
Luc loved me. Yet he tried to kill me. And for what? Power.
‘Take them!’ Luc screams at Gudrun as he and Michael spin towards each other, meeting with a sound like breaking waves.
‘You have to try,’ Ryan shouts, as Gudrun leaps through the air towards us, her twisted, deadly blade raised, her perfect teeth bared, a personal score to settle.
‘Try, Mercy,’ Ryan yells. ‘For us.’
Us.
Though I’m nauseous and dizzy with fear, I embrace Ryan tightly with one arm, shut my eyes and leap off the ground.
No thought, just sensation. Against gravity, against every inclination, I’m flying.
My left hand burns and burns in agony. I make the mistake of looking at it, looking down at the ground falling away from us, and have to close my eyes again and swallow.
‘Mercy, open your eyes!’ Ryan screams. ‘We’re going to hit!’
My eyes flash open to see that majestic roof inches away from our upturned faces. It’s pure reflex what I do next.
I curve my arms around to protect Ryan’s mortal form, curve his face into the side of mine, clasp him even more tightly to me. And I take the full brunt of the glass and iron ceiling of the Galleria upon my forearm, upon my shoulders, my down bent head. Glass and steel shriek and rend as we burst outward into the storm-tossed night.
20
The air is icy. Ryan inhales sharply, begins to cough and shudder.
I look back at the jagged hole torn in the roof of the Galleria, the fiery glow emanating from the building, and know that we have only minutes before Luc’s forces come after us.
