Muse (19 page)

‘Keep walking,’ she says. ‘
Time.
Time’s getting away from you. We’ll sort this mess out later.
Move.
’

Her words send my heart into overdrive and I tear my gaze away from Luc, away from Ryan, and lurch up the catwalk in my dress of molten gold. I stare down the barrel of all the lenses of the world’s fashion press with my haunted, fearful eyes, then sweep back up the catwalk and behind the blank white wall at the catwalk’s end, without pausing.

Juliana grips my sleeves tightly and says fiercely, ‘Tommy’s waiting, go,
go
. Lila and Kirsten can make up the time — I will send them together.
Go.
’

I stumble into Tommy’s waiting arms, and feel hands reach out to strip me of my golden armour, because I can’t seem to make myself move any more.

When I emerge onto the catwalk in my second look — the jaunty, black tricorn hat and face veil atop that sinful black dress with the barely there bodice and full skirt lined in shocking pink, those black wings — I look at no one and nothing but the bright white line of the catwalk, clutching the black leather horse whip they’ve placed under one arm like it’s a life belt. I pass beneath the dome and I don’t look around and I don’t stop walking.

They’re both still there, I can feel it. That, and my building terror.

I pause for the delectation of the world’s press, then pivot sharply and head back up the catwalk towards the dome.

All I can think about is Luc’s plan, back before he somehow managed to get a lock on my position in Milan. Luc had said: find the boy, give the Eight the slip, get back to Paradise and wait it out for him.

But Ryan isn’t needed any more, because Luc’s found me. Somehow he got away from Nuriel. Luc’s here.

Ryan’s here, too. And Luc’s seen him.

My kind think people like Ryan are disposable.

Luc has the power to crush Ryan like an insect.

The thought makes me falter, visibly, and I have to pause on the circular platform beneath the twinkling dome.

The moment I do, thunder loud enough to shake the glass and iron roof of the Galleria suddenly booms in the sky above us, drowning out the driving soundtrack. It’s quickly followed by lightning so bright that the glassed-in roof — in the shape of a vast cross — turns an eye-searing white for an instant.

Talk immediately ripples through the well-heeled audience, and continues as I stagger back into the marshalling area.

They don’t know, you see, that the storm that was promised, that storm for the ages, it’s here. It’s finally come.

Just as Luc has.

First fire, then flood. He never does things in small measures.

Juliana squeezes my forearms and says in her thick Italian accent, ‘
Magnifico.
Now you must think the happy thoughts, the thoughts of the bride, okay? Think of light, of love. It is almost finished.’

Love?

As first the wings then the black dress are taken off me, piece by complicated piece, and hands tug the lacy, fitted white bodice of the bridal gown down over my head, I think: It is almost over.

And when the last of the players arrive, there will be fear and pain, reprisals and death. An accounting.

Orla takes her time coming off the catwalk in her strapless, silver screen-siren dress, and bumps into me deliberately as I stand in the wings clutching a bouquet of gardenia, white rose and lily, a small sparkling tiara set forward on my crown, my long, toffee-coloured hair wrapped into a smooth and complicated topknot.
The happy bride.
That’s what I’m supposed to be.

Orla just ends up hurting herself, because I do not yield. She just glances off me — a moving force hitting an immovable object — and almost loses her balance, coming down out of one shoe again. ‘Bitch!’ she shouts, rubbing her bare shoulder, her usually pale complexion almost as violent a red as her dyed hair. There’s a large bruise already forming upon her skin where we made contact.

She limps away, holding one shoe, and I walk out of the wings with my head held high.

Think light and love. Right.

Then
that song
bursts forth out of the speakers and I begin to tremble.

The Flower Duet, impossibly lovely, so moving that people immediately begin to clap and whistle when they see me. Some rise to their feet.

I curtsy gracefully — the way I was taught to do, like a dancer — and begin to walk slowly down the runway, holding my bouquet lightly in my clasped and shaking hands, looking straight ahead despite my tension and the weight of the white snowy wings upon my shoulders.

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 less and less human. More and more luminous, more beautiful. Grow
wings
.

Then swords of pure flame ignite in their hands, crackling with energy, and the air around me begins to superheat as six move to contain two.

People begin to shriek and scramble backwards, away from us. I sit up slowly on the runway, head pounding, eyes watering.

Luc raises one hand casually and the vast space is suddenly plunged into a terrible darkness in which the only visible things are the eight beings surrounding me.

One by one the video screens go up in flames along the length of the arcade, so that those who have not already made it to the southern exit turn and flee for the east–west axis of the cross-shaped building, screaming in terror, trampling others in their desperation to flee the flames.

The darkness is lit by fire, by the screens of mobile phones, by eerie flashes of lightning from above. Around us is utter chaos; the theory of that man Darwin in motion.

‘Mercy!’ I hear Ryan shouting somewhere behind me. ‘Mercy! Where are you?’

I turn to look for him, but all the chairs have been swept aside. There are bodies everywhere, people pushing and buffeting each other. The smell of burning plastic and circuitry is intense and acrid.

‘We have no quarrel with you,’ I hear Barachiel say to Gudrun as she edges towards me, as if for safety. ‘Stand aside from him and you get to live.’

K’el, Jeremiel, Uriel and Gabriel close in around Luc’s golden, watchful form.

Michael turns his head of short, black curls in my direction, fury in his black eyes and raises his blazing blade. ‘
Flee
,’ he roars at me, at Gudrun. ‘You will have little stomach for what we are about to do to the one you each call your
beloved
.’

‘Kneel,’ he bellows at Luc, judgment in his bell-like voice. ‘Submit. There is no one left to pray to. He turned from you when you turned from Him. I should have finished you properly the first time.’

The six close their circle around Luc, intending to sacrifice him here, before us all.

Through the screams of the injured and terrified, I hear Ryan again. ‘Mercy!
Mercy!
Tell me you’re still here.’

I swing my head in his direction, shouting, ‘Ryan! Yes, I’m here.
I’m still here.
Don’t move — I’m —’

Then Luc does it again. He roars my name and I’m as good as dead. Bent double in agony, I can’t hear, can’t see, can’t speak. All because Raphael once thought it a good idea to hide the memory of my name inside me, so deep that I can’t recognise it, or bear to hear it, without going haywire.

Gudrun seizes me by the throat then, lifting my mortal form easily off the ground.

Michael frowns; the other five exchange glances. But their watchful stances never vary. They are here for Luc first and foremost.

‘Let her die,’ Michael says dismissively, turning away from Gudrun, from me. ‘At heart, she’s one of
you
anyway. Do your worst, demon.’

Demon?
Is that what she is?

Is that what Michael and the others really think of me?

I am filled with so much rage and shock and hurt, that my clenched left fist begins to blaze in agony and I kick out, almost breaking free of Gudrun’s imprisoning hold. She digs the fingers of her right hand harder into the flesh of Irina’s throat as Michael and Luc circle around us slowly, blades raised and rippling with a pale blue luminescence.

As I struggle to get air into Irina’s lungs, to stay conscious, Michael’s black eyes clash briefly with mine before they slide away. My shock deepens when I realise that he’s doing this deliberately. He’s actually trying to provoke me, and somehow, just for a moment, I could divine his intent. Anger can be used; it can be channelled, his gaze seemed to say. There must be no surrender. The realisation only makes me struggle harder, though my eyes are
failing, and my movements are growing feeble and unfocused.

Luc’s voice is amused. ‘Still haven’t worked it all out yet, my love? You didn’t used to be so
slow
.’