The Storm (16 page)

She felt like a stone thrown into the ocean, plummeting into the cold, lightless depths. On either side of her she could see distant walls of sheer rock where the city had been torn in half, waterfalls of debris falling from the top of them. Beneath her was nothing but the pit.

‘Please!’ she called out to her angel, but it did not answer. Something bad had happened to it. ‘Help me!’

She fell, tumbling head over feet, the world above growing darker and quieter with every thrashing beat of her pulse. Any second now she’d hit the bottom and that would be it. She’d be buried here forever, in this hole, miles away from everyone and everything. It was the worst thought in the world until another one occurred to her – that the pit might simply go on forever, that she might never stop falling. She screamed for help again, her wretched cry lost in the roar of wind in her ears.

Fire, erupting, and for a second she thought her angel had returned. Then she felt arms around her, and turned to see Schiller there, falling alongside her. He extended his wings, the flames impossibly bright against the shadows, then came the familiar stomach-churning rush as he carried them out of the pit. They reappeared in the middle of the storm, in the centre of the beast’s raging howl, and Daisy had flexed her wings before she realised her angel was back.

Thank you,
she said to them both, breaking free of Schiller in order to avoid a hail of concrete and metal that ripped past. Something else was hurtling towards her, a tower block, still intact. She opened her mouth and let her angel speak, the word hitting the building like a missile, demolishing it in mid-air. She soared through the dust, through the million pieces of debris that still streamed from the beast’s mouth, heading for a distant flame that had to be Howie. He was still shouting, still fighting.

Come on,
she called to Schiller. He appeared next to her, weaving in and out of the storm, his eyes like lighthouse beams searing into the gloom. The beast was up ahead, his mouth the biggest thing Daisy had ever seen, a mountain-sized hole in the sky. She screamed at him, a shockwave of sound that vaporised a path through the chaos, striking him between the eyes. Beside her, Schiller called out, his voice a canon shot. Daisy ducked and weaved until she hung beside Howie, the three of them punching out word after word, until the man’s face was a nest of burning black worms.

Is it working?
Schiller asked. The thunder of the storm was so loud that Daisy had trouble hearing his words even though they were inside her head.

Is he dying?

I think so,
she replied, firing another word, pulling apart even more of the storm. She felt like a summer wind, clearing the clouds from the sky with her breath.
Keep going!

The beast shook its giant head, so big that it looked as though it was moving in slow motion. A noise like machine-gun fire rose up from inside him, followed by a bolt of black lightning, so dark that it burned its shape into Daisy’s eyes. It grazed her, knocking her back, but it was Schiller who took the brunt of it. The light hit his face with a whipcrack, another one snaking up and punching through his torso like a harpoon, gone as quickly as it appeared. The boy’s fire flickered off and he began to fall.

‘No!’ Daisy cried, the word twinned with one of the angel’s, burning from her lips, hitting the beast like a huge invisible hammer. Howie screamed as well, his cry detonating in the middle of the storm. Daisy tucked in her wings, diving after Schiller, seeing him slam into a chunk of something big, his body spinning like a ragdoll. She reached out to him with her mind, wrapping phantom hands around him, using the same thought to shield him from the flying rubble. She reeled him in, holding him next to her as another fork of lightless lightning lashed across the sky, close enough that she could feel its icy touch on her skin. Schiller wasn’t moving. She couldn’t even be sure he was breathing, and when she peered into his skull she could see none of the little flickering thoughts there.

Her anger was like an engine powering up inside her, accelerating up her throat and exploding as another shout. The noise it made as it left her lips was like a crack of thunder, and when it struck the man it stripped the storm away to reveal the pasty white skin of his bloated face. The flesh seemed to melt, dripping down into his eyes like candlewax. She didn’t hesitate, screaming again and again and again, her words and the angel’s combined, ‘Die! Die! Die!’

It uttered a deafening groan, the sound of a huge ship sinking. The storm from its mouth had all but stopped, and the rage in its eyes had been replaced with something else, something that might have been fear. It looked at her, at Schiller, at Howie, as though it was studying them, remembering their faces. Then the sky went black, as if it had pulled night over itself.

Daisy couldn’t quite work out what had happened until she looked up and saw them. Wings, two of them, crafted from flame so dark that it looked as if somebody had cut their shape out of the world with a giant pair of scissors. They radiated their black light across what remained of the city, and she thought that if fire could rot then this is what it would look like. It was horrible, and yet hanging there before it, her own wings spread and her own eyes blazing, there was no way to ignore it. She could have been looking into a mirror – a carnival one, yes, that distorted your reflection, but a mirror nonetheless.

The beast swept its vast wings down. The storm ripped outwards, the creature’s fire spreading, burning up its body and over its face. Daisy realised what it was doing and shouted out another word, but it was too late. With a thunderous crack and another flash of blinding darkness the beast vanished. Air rushed into the space it had occupied, buffeting her, everything that had been held up by the storm now dropping into the pit. Something huge missed her by millimetres and she grabbed Schiller, pulling him close.

Let’s go,
she said to Howie. He nodded at her, his eyes burning, and together they blinked out of existence.

There was no London any more, just a hole, as if somebody had simply ripped the city out of a giant map. Buildings still clung to the edge of the pit – Rilke thought she could see the London Eye teetering over the brink in the distance, and the Shard too, although it was missing its top – but everything else was gone. All that was left was absence and ruin, an abyss ringed by a wasteland. She felt as if her mind was the same, a gaping chasm where her sanity should have been, and every other thought reduced to rubble. At least the storm had disappeared, though. Whatever Schiller had done it had worked. Other than the ceaseless rain of dust and rubble that streamed into the pit, the sky was empty.

Please let him be okay,
she thought.
Please God, let him come back to me.

There was a flash of light to her side, making her flinch, but when she turned it was just Daisy materialising. She held a limp figure in her arms, a heap of empty sack that couldn’t be her brother. It couldn’t be.

Rilke scrabbled across the ground, skidding on to her knees next to Schiller. There was a gaping wound in his stomach, the wetness there as dark as ink but flecked with streaks of blood. She hugged him to her, smoothing down his hair. There were only a few wisps left, his scalp bald and wrinkled. In fact his whole face looked like an old man’s, his eyes two puffy bags and his mouth loose. He didn’t look real; he looked as though he was made of paper, a child’s scribble for a face.
Oh what have I done what have I done?
‘Schiller, talk to me, please. Please, little brother.’

Beside her, Daisy took a breath and her fire whispered off, her wings fading and folding until she was just a little girl again. She teetered and Cal ran to her, catching her as she fell. Her nose was bleeding, and the boy gently smeared the blood away. She too could have been a hundred years old. Adam ran to her, taking hold of her hand as if it was a butterfly. Rilke hated her, she hated all of them. And she hated herself most of all. How could she have been so stupid?

‘What did you do to him?’ she said, clutching her brother to her chest. The emotion was pounding at her ribs with iron fists, screaming to be let out, but she locked it down, the pain in her throat like she had swallowed glass. ‘What did you do to him, Daisy?’

‘Leave it, Rilke,’ said Cal. ‘You saw what happened, he saved us, they all did.’

Rilke stroked her brother’s face, hard enough to leave welts on his pale skin. She shook him, calling his name, but he just stared into the middle distance with glass eyes.
Where are you, Schill?
she asked him.
Come out of there, right now.

‘Is it dead?’ came a voice from behind her. She turned to see Brick emerging from the shell of a building, snorting dust from his nose. ‘Did you kill it?’

‘No,’ said Daisy. There was some colour returning to her cheeks, pushing out the wrinkles. She sat up, leaning her head on Cal’s chest, taking deep, rattling breaths. There was another flash of light and suddenly the other boy was with them, his arms wheeling as he fought to catch his balance. He failed, plopping down on to his knees, looking round in shock. Daisy smiled at him, saying, ‘Howie, are you okay?’

‘Not really,’ he said after a moment, shuffling on to his backside. ‘I think I may have drunk too much rum.’

Rilke grabbed a handful of her brother’s shirt, clutching it so hard that she thought her fingers would break. How dare he make jokes when her brother lay dying?

‘So what, then?’ Brick went on.

‘I think the storm just moved,’ Daisy said. The little girl wiped the back of her hand across her face, smudging trickles of blood into a gory eye mask. ‘The same way we do. It transported.’

‘Where?’ asked Brick.

‘California,’ shouted the man, the one who had shown up on a motorbike, still standing further down the street. He had told them his name but Rilke didn’t care. He was one of them, one of the humans, and Schiller should have killed him like he killed the woman.
But that’s wrong, Rilke,
part of her brain argued.
You were wrong, remember, about everything.
She shook the thoughts away, watching as he clipped his phone shut. He was covered in dust, looking like a phantom in the weird orange light of the broken day. ‘It’s appeared in the States, it’s just been confirmed.’

‘Cal, who’s he?’ asked Daisy.

‘He’s a friend, I think,’ Cal replied. ‘Everyone, this is Graham. Graham, everyone.’

The man nodded a greeting, his brow furrowed.

‘You mind telling me what the hell is going on?’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Just kids,’ said Daisy. ‘But something else too.’

‘Shut up!’ shouted Rilke, her anger so much like a living thing inside her that she wondered if it was her angel. The two had to be linked. There was only one letter between them, after all. ‘All of you just shut up. My brother needs help.’

Schiller seemed to be sinking into himself, deflating. Rilke pulled him to her, the sobs finally breaking out of the prison of her throat, pouring from her mouth like vomit. She couldn’t stop them, couldn’t breathe, forcing herself to suck in great big lungfuls of air between her strangled cries. She couldn’t bear it, to be so
weak
.

‘Help him,’ she said to nobody, to everybody. ‘I don’t know what to do. He’s going to die.’

‘Yeah, and whose fault’s that?’ said Brick behind her, ducking down on his haunches and spitting a gob of black phlegm. ‘You brought him here.’

Rilke wanted to kill him. She wiped away her tears but they kept flowing, and she pushed her face into the wetness of Schiller’s stomach so that nobody would see them. He smelled of copper and soot; an old, found thing. She wished she could pull herself inside him, lock herself there in his blood. That way she wouldn’t let him die.

‘I was so sure,’ she said.

‘You were so wrong,’ Brick muttered.

‘It’s okay, Brick,’ said Daisy. Her voice was close, and when Rilke looked up she saw the girl there, her hand resting on Schiller’s forehead. She didn’t want her to touch him, but she could not find the strength to object. ‘Schiller, can you hear me? It’s Daisy.’

No response; he could have been a corpse already. Daisy cocked her head and Rilke realised she was still speaking to him, but with her mind. Schiller coughed, spraying blood over her. His blood, her blood, the same thing. She looked at it in horror, as if she was the one bleeding out. She pulled him to her, resting his head on her knee.

‘I mean it, Schiller,’ said Daisy. ‘Don’t be scared. They’ll look after you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Rilke said. ‘I’m going to look after him, me and no one else, do you hear me?’

Daisy didn’t take her eyes off Schiller. The boy coughed again, and his milky eyes cleared. He looked at Daisy, then at Rilke.

‘It’s okay, Schill,’ said Rilke. ‘You
are
going to be well again.’

You will do what I say,
she told him in her head. He had always done as she said, always. She couldn’t think of a single time he had ever disobeyed her, not in all their years together. Because she always did what was best for him. It was her job to look after him, and he knew that, he trusted her.
You will not die, I won’t let you.
And then it hit her, the impossible thought of being without him. Because they had never spent a day apart, not once. He was as much a part of her as her own heart, her own thoughts. Incubated together, born together, lived together, they were one.
Because I can’t live without you, Schill. I won’t. So just rest, and get better, and we can go back to how things were.

He smiled at her. She could almost see the life draining from him, more of that oil-black fluid pumping from his stomach, as if his blood had been poisoned. He opened his mouth to speak but retched instead, a fountain of ink gushing over his cheek. His body was a huge, broken thing that he could no longer control, that
she
could no longer control.

‘No! Schiller!’ Rilke screamed. She grabbed him under the chin, twisting his head up. ‘I will not let you die, do you hear me? You
will not leave me
.’

‘I’m not scared,’ he said in a liquid whisper. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

‘But I need you, little brother,’ said Rilke. ‘I love you.’

His reply wasn’t a word, but a thought, one that he beamed out with such strength that Rilke felt it. It was golden, and bright, and full of the smell of lavender and old books like in the library back home, the place they had spent day after day reading to each other and playing hide and seek and, later in life, where she had hidden from the bad things, where her brother had looked after her; so wonderful that it seemed to blow away the last scraps of darkness from the city. Suddenly it was summer again, warm and quiet and full of a laughter that was felt, if not heard. Why couldn’t they be there, now, in their mother’s window seat, her legs resting on his as they told tales of what they would do when they left home?
Not this, never this.
Rilke pushed her head into Schiller’s chest, worming her way in as if she could pull out his sickness. Schiller managed to lift a hand, placing it on the back of her neck, his skin so cold it was as though he was frozen again.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Don’t be,
he said, and she knew it would be the last time she heard his voice. Schiller’s body trembled, his hand slipping loose, slapping against the ground. He gasped in one last breath, but there was no fear in his eyes, no sadness either, just a flicker of relief and then nothing at all. A trickle of flame burned up through his chest, rising, growing, until with a sudden rush his angel clawed its way free from his flesh, soaring upwards with its wings spread, howling as it faded into the light. It seemed to rip the rage from her belly as it went, because Rilke found herself on her feet, screaming after it.

‘This is your fault! You did this to him! You bastard! You
bastard
!’

But it was gone. She turned to Daisy, then to Cal, then to Brick, wanting to murder them all, to beat them into their graves for their part in Schiller’s death. But without him she was just a half-person, a half-soul, and she could not keep her balance. She staggered, falling down beside her brother’s body, clutching him to her as if she could reattach him, shivering as the warmth of her twin chased up after the angel into the clearing skies.