Exile (10 page)

Chapter 21

In that instant, Gabriel collapses into a towering cloud of fine, silver mist above me, swirling and dense, taking all the heat with it. As I fall to the floor, I look up into the lightning at the heart of that cloud and it falls upon me, like a rain of mercury, a rain of fire, and engulfs Lela, me, us.

Consumes us. Becomes us. Three-into-one.

Gabriel moves
through
— like a swarm of raging locusts, like the Holy Ghost itself — and I feel, as I did in my dream of Ryan, our separate strands, all there. We are wholly distinct, although somehow loosely contained together in the one vessel. Lela is in there, like a locked box, a closed circuit, her soul so twisted and hooked in deep that I can’t find a way to break through to her. She can’t free herself; she can’t slip the knot. And there
is
a knot, I’m certain of it. I can feel us, her and me,
anchored
inside her body by bonds no human being could hope to sunder.

The pressure builds and I feel every cell, every nerve ending, in Lela’s body convulse. There’s a vast electrical storm inside us that is more potent than anything a mortal alone could withstand. It burns through the veil of time itself so that I see, I see —

—
myself and Luc, a shining multitude at our backs, the Eight arrayed against us, holding their instruments of power aloft, a shining host behind
Them
, stretching farther than the eye can comprehend. It is what Uriel showed me before: the two of us the epicentre of something vast, a conflagration waiting to happen — but seen through Gabriel’s eyes.

I feel a shock when I behold my golden beloved again, as if the moment is
now
and not some long distant past that has already slipped through my fingers. Luc’s beauty, his terrible power, is piercing, and when I see myself through the lens of Gabriel’s gaze, my left hand grasped tightly in Luc’s right — so tall, pale and luminous the two of us, even amongst that shining throng — I know that, in that moment, I was invincible because I was under Luc’s protection.

For he was the highest ranked of them all
, whispers that small voice inside.
Or so he claimed for himself.

Luc and me, me and Luc, proof against all the world.

What happened to us?

Then I see a steep, distant mountainside — in Greece? Tibet? Russia? — inaccessible to all save the most foolhardy; the soil scorched for leagues around, every tree, plant, animal and rock in the vicinity of the deadly crater upon one lonely slope utterly destroyed, reduced to ashes. That term they use on news bulletins everywhere these days pops into my mind:
collateral damage
.

I see Gabriel combing souks, markets, fairs, uprisings, gatherings of every form and description in a thousand cities that will never live again. In search of something, someone —
me
? I sense his frustration, his growing anger, how he almost tears down the physical world in his search — leaving in his wake unnatural storms and weather patterns, random lightning strikes that devastate all. Like me, he is not always the most . . . even-tempered.

Then he takes us into a series of chambers deep beneath the streets of an ancient human city. It is a place truly out of nightmare: both crypt and ossuary, piled high with centuries of the jumbled dead. Walls, floors, ceilings all carpeted with bones — grinning skulls, femurs, tibias, pelvic girdles; full skeletons arranged in grisly tableaux; everywhere the bodies of the ancient dead laid out on marble tombs, arranged in sepulchres in the seeping walls. The smell of decay, mildew, waste, the dust of ages, is thick in the air, which is itself alive with the sounds of running water, of rats and mice, of creeping, chitinous life.

In this hellish domain stand seven men, unnaturally tall, preternaturally beautiful, youthful, unmarked, ageless, each like a beacon, a lighthouse, unto himself. They have no need for external illumination, for each is a being of pure fire, casting no shadow.

They are gathered about a stone table, discussing in low voices the remains laid out upon it. Only one is missing from their number: flame-haired, emerald- eyed Gabriel, who steps now into this chamber, which is the last in a series of echoing rooms so deep within the earth that mortal man has surely forgotten them.

‘Brother, well met,’ says the being I knew as Jeremiel, silver-eyed, auburn-haired, with a voice like exaltation. It sends a shiver through me to see him again, to hear him, though the words he speaks are already dust and memory.

I see Uriel there, too, one eyebrow raised sardonically as he says, ‘You took your time, brother.’

Gabriel ignores him, asks of Jeremiel eagerly, ‘Can you be certain . . .?’

In answer, the circle of men, of creatures more than man, part to allow Gabriel into their midst. What I see on that marble dais — twisted, blackened, shrunken — brings a ringing scream to Lela’s blue- tinged lips that wrenches me out of memory into the present.

And I see that my left hand is afire, the flames fully visible though it is daylight.

I hold my burning fingers up to my face, and my cries of anguish echo off the walls of the Green Lantern, breaking against the still forms of all the humans that surround me. I feel the heat of the flames bleed into the air, but the pain is only a ghostly trace of the original agony that once almost consumed me. Of that agony I felt when I woke to find Them standing over me, judgment in Their eyes, every one of Them, all those years ago.

Where did the time go? Where was Luc when I begged Them to put me out of my misery in that grim realm of the dead, and They denied me? Forced me to
live
.

The full horror of that memory, of what I was reduced to, assails me again and I cannot speak the words, though I think them.
Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you put me down like a dog?

As if in answer, I feel Gabriel surge through Lela’s dying frame, as though he has become reduced to his base particles, like some kind of sentient gas, a storm front of liquid fire, of inexorable energy. He leaves no physical mark of his passing, but, like a swarm of raging locusts, like the Holy Ghost itself, he has eaten away at the foundations of my absolute, unshakeable faith in Luc, and now there is doubt there, in my gaze, where before there was none.

Who lies to me? Who lies?

He leaves us and coalesces rapid into his human form. I take a great, heaving breath, coughing and gasping, no longer racked by the torment of spiritual possession.

The being that is Gabriel gently lifts me into his arms again. ‘So you see,’ he utters sorrowfully, ‘how easy it was to carry you out of that place and devise a means of hiding you inside a vast array of human lives over many, many years. You were nearly spent when Selaphiel located you. While it is true that we want to keep you and Luc apart, it is not true that we wish you . . . dead. We were simply forced to find a means of shielding you from Luc’s attention, of throwing him off your trail. He was looking for you in all the places we had been, and we have only managed to stay ahead of him all these years because we Eight united in this purpose almost as soon as you were . . . lost to us.’

Is that pain in his gaze, I wonder. Why would he have cared if I was lost? Why must Luc and I — star-crossed lovers, if ever such a thing existed — be kept apart?

Gabriel frowns. ‘The only flaw in Raphael’s plan has been that strange continuing connection you have with Luc — as if he marked you in some way that cannot be seen by any save him. It is especially strong when you are asleep, when the linkages between soul and body are at their weakest. When you are at rest, he has access to your thoughts and pursues you across all the hours of darkness, only to have that connection snatched away at daybreak.’

Gabriel’s tone grows graver still. ‘It is time. If Michael knew I’d given you even this much insight into your . . . condition, he would not be pleased.’

I recall Michael, and how he is, terrible in his beauty and his wisdom. I am sure he has not changed in all this time. To him, change is something that occurs only within established and permissible parameters: the seasons may change, the tides, the cycles of the moon and of the sun, but little else in nature. He is warlike, constant, always correct, dealing only in absolutes of black and white, admitting of no grey. Sometime in the dim past of our history together, he turned from me — or did I turn from him? Since that day, what lies between us has been an ocean of misunderstanding and rue. I’m sure he considers me now more of a long-term project, with its attendant costly overruns, irritations and delays, than a person who was once his . . . friend.

Gabriel closes his brilliant green eyes and I know I am about to leave this place, this third-rate café, and by no conventional means. He will cast me out into that vast sea of human souls, perform that strange necromancy that the Eight fiendishly devised all those aeons ago. But I’m not sure I’m ready to go.

Ryan
? I plead, all my longing in that word.

Not for you
, Gabriel replies without missing a beat, without opening his eyes.
Not your fate
.

Time recommences, and I hear Justine’s terrified gasp.

‘Of course you know him!’ she cries. ‘Don’t try and speak, Lela. Please. Oh God, oh God.’

‘Stand aside, sir,’ says a male voice beside us urgently.

Sulaiman only holds me more tightly to him.

I feel Lela’s body begin to convulse in his arms, blood pouring from her mouth. I am blind again. Cold and growing colder.

What happens now?
I cry into the stillness between us.

It begins again
, Gabriel sighs inside my mind.
And we will tell you to do nothing and you will do everything in your power to draw Luc to you, make ripples enough to signal to the universe that you yet live.

I hear Cecilia and Justine wailing over Lela’s body, while the male paramedic tries to wrest her from Sulaiman’s arms.

You know I will continue to defy you all
, I reply.
And I shall do it again and again!

No doubt
. His voice is like a fleeting smile in my mind.
You have surprised us so far, we eight; behaved more like us than your original self — the self we first cast into hiding. You had taken on all of his worst traits — vanity, pride, self-indulgence, cruelty. But since you’ve been . . . banished,
when he says the word, his voice seems troubled
, you’ve taken so many souls out of Luc’s grasp. Some of us argue that you have changed irreversibly; that the centuries-long game we have engaged in has changed you — for the better. Others of us are not so sure; we believe that were Luc to reclaim you tomorrow, you would be as you once were, save infinitely more powerful.

Now you have forced our hand once more
, he adds, a touch of anger in his tone.
And you must flee this broken body for a new home.

His hold on me grows tighter and I gargle, ‘Wait!’

He grows still, tells the wailing women around us, ‘Quiet! Lela speaks.’

I feel a surge of the living fire that Gabriel represents. Not enough to banish the mark of Azraeil from Lela’s body, but enough to enable
me
to be understood, to undertake one last accounting of my own.

The humans around me grow still, strain forward to hear my words, spoken through pain, through blood, through the harsh susurration of my breathing.

‘Justine, promise me you’ll place a higher value on yourself. Never sell yourself short again. Promise.’

She nods tearfully. ‘I p-promise,’ she stutters, clutching one of Lela’s cold hands in hers. ‘You hear me? It’s a deal.’

‘Franklin?’

I can’t see him through Lela’s sightless eyes, but I hear him clear his throat gruffly, mumble, ‘Yes?’

‘Tell your wife everything. Cause and effect, Franklin. Let your cowardice haunt you all the rest of your days, because this is partly your doing . . .’

For a second, I grip Justine’s hand fiercely in mine. ‘And nd Ryan. Tell him . . . that Mercy shall come again . . .’

Lela’s voice trails away as her lungs fill up with blood. Gabriel loosens his hold on me and I feel Lela’s eyes roll back in her head as I cede control of her dying mind, her soul still knotted tightly into the wreckage of her body.

I’m so sorry, Lela.

Cecilia and Justine wail and wail. It’s a primal sound, the grieving ululation of women everywhere. I could be in the Hebron, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Haiti, Rwanda, Kandahar, Jiangxi, the Sudan. Grief is universal. It transcends language, even time. And it is always the women who are left to grieve.

Though this time, there is one other to join their grieving number. And I pray he will receive and understand my message.

There is a sensation, a tug, as if Gabriel has broken some kind of cord that binds me to Lela. I am like beads on a broken string, each being drawn slowly upwards and pocketed. As I feel myself become something like mist, like fog, the bonds between myself and Lela’s body beginning to loosen.

Inside Gabriel’s mind I cry:
Command Azraeil to reap them gently. Command him to lead Lela’s soul, the soul of her mother, home . . .

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. A place I have not seen for millennia, but to which I hope one day to return, to see again with waking eyes.

Mercy,
Gabriel says for my ears alone.
It is a good name you have given yourself; an apt name.

Godspeed,
I hear him murmur before I find myself falling out of this life, into another . . .