‘Luc would squash you like a bug,’ I growl to hide my fear. ‘You’d be completely unprotected, trailing around after me with demons on the loose.’
‘So let me go with you then,’ Ryan says guilelessly. ‘I could stand behind you when things get nasty.’ He grins. ‘Got no problem with that.’
‘The sensible option would be to leave and never come back. Right now. You know it.’
‘But where would the fun be in that?’ he murmurs. ‘And we’re both due a little fun.’
‘Fun?’ My reply is incredulous. ‘Walking into an obvious trap set by a bunch of first-order demons isn’t defiance, it’s not even fun. It’s just stupid.’
‘But we’re a stupid and obstinate species.’ Ryan grins wider at my expression. ‘Argumentative. Tenacious. Just go for it. You’ve got to love that about us.’
‘It’s not “love” I’m feeling right now! You could die,’ I say again.
‘But I’d be less likely to die if I was with you,’ Ryan wheedles. ‘Because you’d do everything in your power to keep me alive. I know you would.’
‘You’d just get in my way,’ I bluster. ‘The way you got in mine?’ he shoots back. ‘And see what happened? You found Lauren. You saved her life. Good things happen when we’re together.’
He moves forward, taking my hands in his. ‘So you’ll let me turn the tables on you? Let me tag along this time? One last joint mission before you leave me forever?’
I stare up into his face, troubled, seeing demon fire that resists water; that turns flesh to an ash so fine it can be borne away on the wind.
‘With one condition,’ I murmur. ‘If we do this, if we try to go after Nuriel together — you’re free to leave at any time. You don’t have to stay to see how it pans out. You have my permission to run when you feel like running. I won’t hold you to anything.’
‘Free to bail,’ Ryan agrees solemnly. ‘No strings.’
Though there are. We can feel the ties that bind us together, even if we can’t see them. Our words are at once empty of meaning, and brimming with it.
He folds his arms around me and places his lips against my forehead, tentatively, half-expecting me to scatter into a formless cloud of light, before looking down into my eyes with a crooked grin.
‘You know I’ll just keep chipping away at those defences,’ he murmurs, ‘working up your tolerance levels, taking you outside your comfort zone. Consider yourself forewarned.’
He feels me shiver in answer, and gives a low and sexy laugh. Is about to say more, maybe even kiss me again, when the night is shattered by a chorus of nightmare: a score of voices shrieking wordlessly, converging from many directions at once, speaking no language ever devised by the elohim.
Ryan and I clutch each other in mounting horror as light begins to punch through the windows of the tower in a staccato, scattergun motion. Searing light, with a sickly grey tinge at its heart, like a cancer. Demonlight. Time seems to speed up and slow down all at once as the metal window frames ripple and flex, then fly inwards, propelled by some unimaginable force, their glass exploding a second later, shredded into a powder so fine it fills the atmosphere.
Ryan turns his head away sharply, coughing, as the glittering, granular powder disperses through the air and the warped window frames hit the stone with a sound like gunshot.
The light streaming in through the windows, the high-pitched shrieking, grow and grow until they are almost unbearable and I know that he’s out there, Luc’s out there.
Ryan stumbles away from me suddenly, up the stairs, tripping and cursing as he rounds the corner, out of sight. And I fall to my knees, my arms wrapped around my head in agony, wondering if the noise has driven him out of his mind the way it’s invading mine.
Through the monstrous screaming, I seem to hear Luc whisper in my ear, almost as if he’s standing over me. I’m coming for you. If not now, then soon. I am wolf to your hart, hound to your hare, and I will bring you down. Believe it.
An incredible surface pressure suddenly builds, as if the atmosphere is somehow twisting and condensing, pushing down upon me. It’s as if the air around me is becoming molten. I feel an indescribable rage, a terrible malice. Luc cannot physically touch me, but he’s manipulating the air itself into a kind of weapon, the embodiment of his anger. It pushes at me from all directions, reaching in through the paneless windows as if it would kill me where I lie.
‘Ryan!’ I cry out, fearful it will crush his mortal frame.
The light outside, the heat, the screaming, all build and build. There’s a crack, a sonic boom so vast I wonder that it does not level the city, this cathedral.
An instant of light, so searing it’s like being at the heart of an atomic cloud, and then darkness returns. The pressure begins to recede rapidly, like the tide turning. The air grows cool and thin, the way air should be. And I know with absolute clarity that Luc is gone, for now, taking his demons with him.
I spring upright, screaming, ‘Ryan!’
I am the only visible thing left in this place. The darkness inside the tower is absolute. The cold air streaming in from the open windows is like needles against my skin, though the night is still and silent now. There’s no snow, no sleet, no wind. The storm that has been raging all night, the storm to end all storms, it’s over. Gone with Luc.
I feel Ryan before I see him: his familiar energy, the hum of him growing stronger to my senses. His boots strike the stone stairs with a clumsy sound, then a crunch and slide upon powdered glass as he turns the corner. He collapses beside me on the landing, breathing heavily.
‘I headed higher up,’ he gasps, ‘thinking the view would be better, but all the windows are so high and narrow. I couldn’t grab on to any of the window ledges — they’re cut so that they slope down.’ He grasps my arm, his gaze and words feverish. ‘I had to jump to see out properly. And I’d just left the freakin’ ground when something gripped me hard, like a fist, holding me there. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I saw all these streams of light twisting together like a rope that got sucked back into the hole in the roof of that Galleria place.’
I feel his thoughts running hot beneath his skin; let myself see how it was through his eyes.
‘They were … demons, right?’ He swallows, still unable to grasp the physical existence of such creatures. ‘How could something so beautiful be so … evil?’
Again I get that disorienting flash of Luc — superimposed over the features of the young man before me. I shiver, whispering, ‘Take it from me, it’s possible.’
Still shaking, I head up several steps to the window above our landing, needing to see for myself. The narrow aperture lies just beyond reach, uncovered now against the night air, the glitter of pulverised glass beneath it. Ryan described it accurately: the window is set in deeply, and impossible to keep a grip on. But I tell myself fiercely: You can do it, you can do anything. Then I leap lightly into thin air … and I’m floating. My feet aren’t touching the ground.
Will it and it is done. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Yet, I am vertigo. I am panic. I am nausea. It feels too much like flight for comfort. I wonder if it will ever feel natural again: leaving the earth behind me.
As I drift there, unsupported, I glimpse black smoke still pouring from the ruined roofline of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; the steady pulsing of the lights of the emergency vehicles parked