Wraith, page 22
From one life to another, her people sang her in and they sang her out, and she never knew what it took to get her there because she was never conscious. And they would move her again and again until the day she began to wake as herself inside a stranger’s body to the knowledge that something was very wrong with her.
Gabriel was speaking words of reassurance to Mercy, I realise, not to me, because my pain is bearable. She’s not taking me over this time; they are somehow tuning Mercy to me. I’m not the one that’s being reconfigured — made small enough, unobtrusive enough, to be tucked away inside another living being. They’re making her undetectable to Luc and his kind. In a way, they’re making her as demon-proof as she’ll ever be.
This, whatever it is, is actually bearable, as if the initial feeling of being bathed in fire is gradually diminishing, gradually cooling. But whatever they’re doing to her is tearing Mercy apart all over again. It’s not like when she simply steps into me and takes me over by brute force. They are twisting and remaking her; they’re breaking her down into the barest essence of what she is — to fit me.
And they know, having seen the barren wasteland inside, that there is plenty of room within me to hide her.
Beneath Mercy’s agony, I begin to make out eight separate voices. All are singing in a language that existed before all life did. It’s so beautiful it raises gooseflesh on my skin; elements of the song are almost recognisable until it veers into languages I know have long since been lost. It’s a song through which all the tongues of angels, and of humans, run like a river, as they were, as they are. The air shimmers with pain and beauty and wonder, the eight voices weaving in and out in dizzying counterpoint, some strands of the melody higher or lower than the human voice is even capable of.
The expression in Mercy’s eyes is a form of pleading — that I will remember the words and bring her back to life.
She was lost for so long.
Her eyes beg: Don’t let me be lost again.
In my grip, her silver-blue-limned form begins to waver and grow indistinct. She’s like the imprint of someone who once was. A ghost girl. A memory flickering out of existence, that’s being deliberately extinguished.
It’s horrific, and that horror is echoed in the faces of all the gathered elohim.
I find myself still weeping as I struggle to grip Mercy tight, turning my head away sharply as she grows brighter than I can bear to look upon before scattering into nothing more than a cloud of fine, silver-blue mist.
The song of the elohim rises until it seems to echo back at us from the skies, and with it that cloud of energy draws up and up until it is a funnel that collapses into a fine rope, just a thin, skein of twisting, silver-blue energy. I rock forward as it pierces me through, disappearing at the point where it enters my sternum. I feel it seeking the scar that I know is knotted into my soul, moulding itself to it. Going into hiding. Scar laid against scar.
I feel her there, and suddenly find my clenched fists grasping at nothing but afterlight.
I’m the only person standing now inside the circle. I feel the scar inside me pulsing faintly and wonder if, across all those lives, those other women could somehow sense Mercy hidden there like a hard little kernel, this knot, pulsing away beneath the skin. I rub at my breastbone absently. I am the machine being wheeled out; the Trojan Horse in the final act of its brief life.
She is gone into me completely, as if she never was, and I hear one of Mercy’s brothers whisper, head bowed in grief or benediction, ‘It is done.’
23
The gathered wraiths move away, as if my living energy has been tempered by something noxious — as mixed and muddied now as a pool of disturbed water.
‘Do you get a…sense of her?’ I ask the gathered archangels, still rubbing at my chest, unable to believe Luc won’t somehow feel Mercy within or around me.
The gathered elohim turn their piercing gazes on me and shake their heads, Michael growling, ‘Eight are needed, and eight are here. Nothing of her can escape unless and until you will it —’
‘Let no demon touch you,’ Jeremiel interrupts. ‘They will read you and divine your intentions.’
‘Nuriel will draw their gazes,’ Barachiel adds. ‘Stay in her shadow, be watchful. The moment Lucifer and Nuriel are alone —’
‘Say the words,’ Michael cautions with a grim set to his mouth. ‘Nuriel and Mercy will be enough, Gia Basso. They must be.’
‘Together, they may achieve what none of us has ever been able to do,’ Gabriel adds.
‘We have always been finely balanced on disaster,’ Raphael murmurs and I hear the pain and apology behind his words. ‘For every first-order demon that falls, it seems, a power of angels must first die. And unlike the daemonium — whom Luc can fashion out of blood and bone and filth according to his whim — we cannot make our own kind, or be remade. All these years, we have never been able to strike at Lucifer where he dwells without suffering unspeakable losses — but now you can. He will not expect danger to come from this quarter — from two frail, unarmed women. One of whom happens to be harbouring the might and will of the great Azraeil himself.’
‘Do what it is you have to do, Gia Basso, and run,’ Uriel adds, frowning. ‘If Mercy were here, in my place, she would tell you the same.’
But they see in my eyes that I do not expect to outrun what it is that I mean to do, and Jegudiel’s steely grey gaze softens on me momentarily before he turns and addresses his kin. ‘Azraeil has already claimed Gia for his own. Like “Mercy”, she has been marked and she will be called. The fate of these ones —’ he scans the shredding, restless, confused wraiths drifting across the plains and valleys surrounding Dunstanburgh Castle, ‘will not be Gia’s. We must be content with that.’
Then Jegudiel grows in brightness, so that I am forced to shield my eyes, before scattering into motes of light. I am left buffeted by his passing, blinking at the space where he was.
One by one they take their leave in the same way, until only Uriel, Gabriel and Nuriel remain. The night seems so much darker without the others. I find myself shivering uncontrollably, suddenly terrified at what is expected of me.
‘Use Gia as your pattern at all times,’ Gabriel cautions Nuriel, whose eyes appear clouded, focused inward on remembered pain. ‘She has more native cunning than even we possess. You must be the perfect simulacrum of a human being — fleshy, dense, opaque, unpredictable. You’re just an unknown singer — young, uncertain, naïve — who has somehow caught the attention of the most infamous young music icon of his generation. Don’t just stride in there blazing holy fire the way I know you want to. Don’t underestimate the raw power of surprise —’
Uriel cuts Gabriel off. ‘You need to be captured by the security cameras on the bridge, Nuriel. They need to see two human women approaching the island on foot. Only then will they open the gates. They will be completely disarmed if the two of you show up with only a shopping bag between you…’
‘But where have we come from?’ I argue when Nuriel continues to say nothing, anguish etched in every line of her face. ‘They’re going to be suspicious, Uriel, if we just suddenly appear on the bridge that separates the mainland from Riley’s Island. Assume Luc’s got people watching the approach to Buster’s place. Unlike you lot, humans can’t just appear and disappear at will. We’ve got to have come from somewhere.’
‘Then you’ll have come from the direction of Key West International Airport,’ Uriel says thoughtfully, ‘disgorged there like all the other tourists. The airport is only a couple of kilometres away from Riley’s Island.’
Gabriel opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak, but Uriel holds up one of his hands in a zip it gesture that makes me want to laugh. ‘Catching a taxi from the airport is a good idea!’ Uriel insists as Gabriel shakes his fiery head in disbelief. ‘Luc’s not going to expect an archangel to come by cab, Brother…’
I can’t contain the peal of laughter that escapes. ‘How does an archangel know about security cameras, airports, tourists, cabs?’
Uriel frowns at me, but his brown eyes shine with amusement. ‘Because I am ancient, Gia Basso, and I have been paying attention all this time I have been abroad in your world. I have some understanding of how things work. Almost enough knowledge as Mercy has to get by. Almost.’
But then his voice goes quiet, and I have to strain to hear his next words. ‘Mercy and I searched an airport in Tokyo once, looking for Ryan Daley. And now she searches for him again...’
Uriel shakes his head, refocusing his shrewd, dark gaze on me. ‘And if faced with a choice between ending Lucifer’s reign forever and saving the life of that boy, Gia Basso, what would Mercy do? You know her better than anyone on this earth — as far as someone as ornery and impossible as she is can be known. Can she be relied on, do you think?’
Gabriel shoots Uriel a warning look with blazing green eyes. ‘We were created with the right to choose. Mercy will do what the circumstances demand, and with that we must be satisfied.’
‘Her poor choices are what have brought us to this pass,’ Uriel growls.
‘She has changed,’ Gabriel insists, and I get the sense that this argument has played out many times before — across lives and centuries. ‘Beyond all reckoning. She is not the same creature that fell.’
Uriel doesn’t reply, instead stooping for a moment to fetch up something from the ground. It hangs, small and incongruous, from his hand. I blink as he gently hooks my dropped tote bag back onto my shoulder before tilting my face up with one finger and studying me intently. Behind my owlish glasses, I feel the strained lines of my face melt under his appraisal.
‘What do you see?’ I whisper, dazzled by all of them, their proximity, the strangeness of this night. His features are so strong and beautiful and familiar — although recast along such stern male lines — that my breath catches in my throat in wonder. Mercy was one of them, once. And she gave all that up to keep Ryan alive. I don’t know if I could have made the same choice. To have power and beauty and grace beyond measure and then to give it all away — it staggers me.
Uriel looks at me for a moment longer with a quizzical half-smile on his face before he straightens and murmurs, ‘I will tell you the next time we meet, Gia Basso — so be sure there is a next time,’ before he, too, vanishes into motes of light.
Nuriel looks down at me then with a look of such bleak sadness that I take a step back.
‘Soror,’ Gabriel reminds Nuriel sternly, and I go cold as her true form begins to blur and ripple and shrink before my eyes; her hair grows longer and straighter and lighter, her form less athletic, less martial, more waiflike, skin paler, more matte, millimetre by millimetre, shift by shift. It’s a process both deeply fascinating and deeply horrifying and I want to look away, but I can’t.
It’s like there is a legion inside her.
When she’s done adding and subtracting to make herself more like Cibyyl and less like herself, she is human in scale and aspect, only a couple of heads taller than I am.
She’s the kind of feminine, pale, demure-looking blonde with pert, perfect breasts that is exactly Luc’s type. Only her dark, wary, wounded eyes are the same.
But there’s still something the faintest bit off about her. There’s a surface glimmer of light around her that seems to seep out of the pores of her skin and I point that out despairingly.
‘It’s never going to work,’ I say. ‘Not when she looks like that. We won’t even make it across the bridge. She’s glowing like a torch. She needs to…’
‘Hold the light inside,’ Nuriel murmurs. ‘The way Mercy can by knotting it down, deep. Help me, Gia. Take my hand.’
I do that, reluctantly. And as I watch — Nuriel’s burning hand gripping mine tightly like an anxious child’s — the surface glimmer of her skin fades and fades until it is almost, but not quite, gone.
‘That will have to do,’ I say, lifting the back of Nuriel’s hand and studying it in the darkness.
Something in me really has changed, I know it has, because I will always see them now, always. Demon or angel, I will see them. It’s as though Mercy’s tripped something in me that can never be reset. I’m awake to them now, the way most people never will be.
Gabriel bends down to look into both our faces. ‘Astaroth, Balam, Beleth, Amon and Caym, even Luc,’ he says, ‘will be dulled by the cold, by the poor protection that their human shells afford. Their new-found freedom — of mobility, agency, anonymity — carries a steep price. There will be a moment — just after they are expelled from those bodies — when they are terribly vulnerable…’
‘I’ve seen it,’ I breathe, dimly remembering that creature in the Argo struggling to pull himself back together after shucking off Spartak Skorobogatov’s mortal body like a corn husk. It had been a vision from hell — filtered through Mercy’s sharp gaze.
Gabriel nods, his dark red hair falling down across his shoulders, his eyes a green so bright it should not exist in this world. ‘Strike them at their weakest,’ he urges Nuriel before looking down into my face with such grave tenderness that I can’t breathe or look away, my heart lodged somewhere high in my throat.
‘You who have felt no hope,’ Gabriel murmurs, ‘are ours. It has always felt to you as if there was no love, or it was fleeting and mutable and never enough. But I say to you, that we walk with you, always, Gia Basso. That in gifting us with your courage and your loyalty, your tenacity and ferocity — your life — there will always be enough love. More than you could ever want. It is your constant, and our promise to you.’
Then he seizes Nuriel and me by the hands and we are gone from the castle grounds before I can draw a single, shuddering breath.
***
The change in temperature, the ambient warmth in the night air, hits me straight away — even before the bright lights do. As I lean down over my knees, dry-retching for air and equilibrium, the solid ground seems to ripple beneath my feet and the lenses of my fake glasses fog over.
Gabriel’s parting words are in my ears. ‘Around this wall you will see the cab rank Uriel spoke of. Stand under the cameras for a moment; be observed. Hail a cab and ask to be taken to Riley’s Island. The rest will be up to you. We will do what we can, when we can.’
Then Gabriel’s gone; I know it from the change of pressure in the tropical air around me, and I squint up at “Cibyyl” from where I’m bent over the tarmac that still radiates heat from the day just passed.
‘What time is it?’ I say out of the side of my mouth.
‘Near midnight,’ Nuriel murmurs, and there’s a flinty quality to her voice that so much resembles simple human anxiety that I want to reach out and touch her reassuringly. She’s still wearing the plain grey tee-shirt dress, flat shoes and kooky rainbow arm-warmers from her music videos, her long hair worn forward across her shoulders, blonde bangs falling into her big brown eyes.
‘You know you could do so much more with your general look,’ I whoop finally, forcing myself to stand upright. I hear the sounds of voices and passing footsteps nearby and hook my left arm through Nuriel’s right. Her skin is unbelievably hot, as if she’s running a high fever. It almost hurts me to touch her. ‘You need to dial it down,’ I remind her, shouldering the tote bag so that it sits a little higher on my right side. ‘We’re just a couple of girls, here for a good time, not a long time. Hold it together, darling. We’re on.’
We move around to the front of the Arrivals pick-up zone, blending in with the light flow of foot traffic, and come to a stop beneath a cluster of security cameras. I point in a few different directions for extra effect while Nuriel stands slightly apart from me and the rest of the waiting people, hugging herself tightly in silence.
‘Buncha losers!’ I hear a man yelling in a strong Barbadian accent. Seconds later, a couple of big guys in baggy pants, gold chains and designer tees shove roughly between me and Nuriel. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the mouth of dude in the rear drop open as he checks out the babe he’s just pushed past. He back-pedals for a moment, staring hard at Nuriel, clearly torn.
‘Fingasmits!’ a man’s voice roars, drawing closer. ‘Come back here!’ The second runner gives himself a shake before sprinting away.
I turn to look at the approaching cab driver. He has a neat moustache and goatee, short dreads hanging around his face. He appears to be in his late twenties or early thirties — a little shorter than Nuriel, a little taller than me — and he’s wearing a short-sleeved maroon and white checked shirt, cargo shorts, open-toed leather sandals, and about half a dozen colourful friendship bands around each wrist.
He’s puffing a little from running as he mutters, ‘Thieving, malicious!’ coming to a stop beside us. ‘Lost the fare,’ the man adds, his brown eyes widening as he checks out Nuriel’s face, before his eyes flick back down to the ground respectfully. ‘You need a taxi to get around Key West? I can take you.’ He points at a bright purple SUV parked haphazardly across the main drive from where we’re standing.
‘We’ve got no American money,’ I blurt, realising with a sinking heart that the best-laid plans of the archangels hadn’t included much local folding. ‘Only British pounds.’
‘I take pound, sugar,’ the man replies quickly, his eyes taking quick, dazzled, glances at Nuriel’s face. Around us, I see a few other people doing the same, one of the men standing near us fumbling eagerly for his phone.
‘Do I know you?’ the cab driver quizzes Nuriel, clearly trying to work out where he’s seen her before. ‘Micah Gittens,’ he adds, holding out his right hand to be shaken.
In her usual way, Nuriel looks down at Micah’s hand like she’s not sure what it’s for, so I grab it instead and grip it firmly before releasing it. Micah re-focuses on me with difficulty, blinking as if he’s been staring into the sun for too long.
