drives down as if it would bury the world. And the two demons that hunt us circle the forest of marble spires at a distance. Unable to come any closer, compelled to stay back, rending the air with their violence, their screaming. Even from so far away, I see how beautiful they are — the lethally muscular male with short, auburn curls and dead-looking, midnight eyes, whom I once knew as Hakael; his companion, Gudrun, Luc’s beloved these days now that I am his beloved no longer. His minions, here to finish what he started.
In a moment of weakness, I lean the side of my face against Ryan’s bowed head. His skin is so cold. In place of the exaltation I should be feeling, I’m filled with a crippling dread.
There’s no time. There’s never been any time for Ryan and me. As if it was the fate that was written for us once, a long time ago to find each other, then lose each other twice, three times over and we are merely playing it out.
I falter to a stop, my eyes raking the darkness, the steep incline of the cathedral’s peaked roof, holding Ryan so close that the unsteady beat of his heart could be mistaken for the one I don’t possess. I remind myself fiercely that I don’t believe in fate. Remind myself, too, that I have the power to kill and the power to heal in equal measure; that these things were in me when I was first created. I just need to get Ryan inside, away from the bone-piercing cold, from the demons screaming, Haud misericordia! No mercy! Then do what needs to be done. The other stuff, the tricky stuff — about us, and what that could even mean — I’ll have to work out later.
The grip I have on Ryan is awkward, as if I’m locked in the arms of a drowning man who’s dragging me beneath the water. I brace him against my right side, pulling his left arm over my left shoulder so that he’s more upright against me and that’s when I see it.
The fingers of my left hand are entwined with his, and they burn with flames of pure energy. The pain of this living scar, this proof of Luc’s betrayal, is no more than a dull ache now, present but subsumed, though the flames still retain their hypnotic, corrosive beauty.
And I suddenly remember that when Luc had torn me free of Irina Zhivanevskaya’s body, he hadn’t bothered to unravel that last, tiny portion of my soul in which the Archangel Raphael had hidden my name. In these flames, in this flaw, is written my true name; the name that still eludes me. Raphael’s gift. And his curse.
I will never be whole and perfect until I reclaim the name I was given. Until then, ‘Mercy’ will have to do, as it has done for the longest time. It was the last word I ever uttered as myself — until today. And it is apt. I think that, maybe, I have even begun to earn the name.
A flash of silver-grey, as luminous as it is subtly tainted, passes overhead, then another. The demons come as low as they dare, and the air is filled with a shirring sound, as of an approaching plague. Then living fire rains out of the sky — sphere after sphere, each perfect and distinct, no bigger than a demon’s cupped hand. There’s no time to run, nowhere to hide. All I can do is curve myself protectively around Ryan and pray that the end is swift, and that we might meet again.
But this place carries its own peculiar magic. The flaming spheres hit some barrier that even I cannot see, and shatter into waves of brilliant light before dissolving utterly. The sky is lit weirdly red as each missile implodes and dies away to embers — as if I stand beneath some kind of demon-born aurora borealis.
And then I remember to move.
But thunder loud enough to raise the dead peals out, followed by a flash of lightning that cracks the rim of night. In its light, I see a tall, broad-shouldered figure, outlined in silver, dressed in robes of black, with long silver hair flying loose about his shoulders in the storm. He stands upon the very apex of the crown of stone carvings about a hundred feet away. His face is youthful and beautiful and deadly, his stance relaxed; arms held loosely at his sides, fingers slightly curled. His eyes are untroubled, but watchful, as blue as the daytime sky.
Shock blazes through me as our gazes lock. The Archangel of Death craves the souls of the blameless; he cannot help but be drawn to them. It is his province, his peculiar calling. He has no use for the other kind.
Azraeil! I scream, for his ears alone. You stay away from him! You stay away.
Do I imagine his half-smile before the darkness returns? When I peer at the raised cross at the centre of the stone crown, it stands empty of life.
No one takes precedence over Death. It’s part of our lore; a given. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Ryan go before we’ve had a chance to work out what we are to each other. I am owed.
At the very least, I am owed some answers, and to give some in return.
I resume my stumbling descent down the treacherous roofline, cradling Ryan’s head against the line of my neck. His left forearm is taut across my shoulder, his left hand still grasped tightly in my burning one. The argent flames seem to leap off my skin, begin to envelop his, yet he remains beyond reach, is turning slowly to stone.
For a moment, I imagine that his heart actually stops before resuming its faltering, thready beat. My fear causes me to break into a sliding run.
I realise with shock that Azraeil was standing almost directly above the flight of steep, stone stairs I’ve been searching for. With Ryan clamped tightly against me, I skitter towards them, along a rain-slicked, narrow canyon of stone. As I pass beneath a towering row of flying buttresses, Ryan’s head slumped against the line of my jaw and collarbone, I hear the demons challenging me with their bestial voices from on high: Haud misericordia!
They can wait forever. I don’t have forever.
At the end of the walkway, I reach a doorway cut into the stone: the entry to a great tower. Inside, is a staircase that leads down to the street, straight into the Piazza del Duomo, the Duomo Square. I have not walked those stairs in centuries, but I remember. I know I’ll have shelter enough inside that tower to try to fix the things inside Ryan that are broken.
As I step forward into the gaping darkness, Ryan’s heart stops all together, and its shuddering beat does not resume.
I have no memory of how I got us inside the tower, but suddenly I’m crouched over Ryan’s motionless form. He lies where he fell from my nerveless grasp upon the cold stone, his long frame curled awkwardly on one side. His skin is unnaturally pale and he’s no longer breathing.
My terror causes me to wail aloud, causes my burning left hand to flame even brighter so that it’s as if a small star is trapped in this narrow, breathless space. There’s no time. There’s never been enough time for us.
Outside, the demons screech their fury to the skies, seeking a way in, a way to get to me. But for now, we’re in one of the few places on this earth where they may not follow, and it gives me the courage to plead to the dead air crowding us.
Azraeil! I feel your presence here and I ask you to stay your hand. Not yet, Brother, please.
It’s too soon. Too soon.
We are deep within the tower, many twisted flights down, our bodies close together upon a narrow stone landing. Above and below, stairs stretch away into the gloom, each one worn down in the centre from centuries of human passage.
No doctor on this earth, no hospital, can save Ryan now. It falls to me alone to call my love back. I steel myself against what I am about to do, because it always, always invites in the unwanted.
Then I place my burning left hand upon his lifeless body, at the base of his cold throat in which a pulse no longer beats. And I atomise in the instant, becoming a rain of mercury, a rain of fire, letting the tide take me where it will.
I am light now, pure energy. I am overwhelmed by the memories of Ryan’s life, his blameless, small-town existence into which a monster strode and took his sister, changing everything in the instant. I feel his horror and rage and helplessness as if I, too, lived every second of those years that Lauren was kept caged away from the sun. I relive all the fights, the dead ends, the building darkness within. In this moment, I know Ryan better than he will ever know himself.