The Storm (21 page)

Brick’s landing was messy, his wings getting in the way as he materialised, tripping him up. The ground rose up too quickly and he covered his head with his hands, crying out, the sound tearing its way through grass and then rock and then water. He tumbled head over heels, hearing the crack of ice as it formed around him, momentum carrying him across the surface of a lake then throwing him up the other side where he eventually rolled to a halt.

There was no pain. He didn’t think he could feel pain in this state. There was relief, though. He’d got away. He didn’t have to fight. He sat up, the world a shifting myriad of atoms and molecules that should have been dizzying but which somehow made sense. Holding up a hand he could see the things he was made of, the cells of skin and bone and muscle and fat, the shifting current of his blood, and the fire that burned, somehow inside him and outside at the same time, making him look transparent. There was a dark stain against his burning skin, and it took him a moment to understand that he was seeing it
through
his hand. He dropped it to his side, seeing a cloud of smoke in the sky over the distant hills. He hadn’t gone far enough.

He got to his feet, lifting himself up by just thinking about it. Now that he was used to the creature inside him it wasn’t too weird. It was good, actually. How many times in his life had he wished for power like this? How many times had he wanted to be able to run away from it all, or to crush the faces of the people who pissed him off – and there had been
so
many of them. God what he’d have done to have had this when he was at school. Nobody would have taken the mickey out of him.

That made him think of Rilke, and he shuddered.
She deserved it,
he told himself.
She had it coming, ever since she killed Lisa.
But the words made his gut churn.

He tried to forget about it, reaching deep into his head and switching off the angel. That was the best way to think about it, as a machine, a suit, like Iron Man or something. The angel was the powerful one, but it didn’t have any control. It could only do what he told it to. He wasn’t quite sure why, but it made sense in a way. They couldn’t survive here, in this reality, by themselves. They had to live inside you, like a parasite in a host. And once there they didn’t have any choice but to go along with what you wanted. He was pretty sure his angel was trying to communicate with him, was probably trying to tell him to go back, to fight the beast. But screw it. His body, his rules. If the angel didn’t like it, then it could go back to wherever it came from.

The flames flickered out and he felt a moment of discomfort as his wings folded themselves back into his spine. Being human again wasn’t pleasant. He felt too real, nothing but meat and gristle. His teeth felt awkward inside his mouth, big and blunt and loose. He was tired, too, and when he ran a hand over his hair he came away with strands of copper between his fingers. He shook them away.

Seeing with his old eyes was good, though. He was in a field. No, a valley maybe. There were no crops here, just wildflowers. The lake he’d hit on the way down was huge, stretching all the way to the horizon, the surface still agitated from the impact. Along the closest bank were a few houses. Maybe he’d be able to get some food there. He was starving.

He set off, the sun like a second skin, making him itch. The heat reminded him of home, of Hemmingway, and that in turn made him think of Daisy.
You left her, all by herself, left her to die,
his head said. But that was a lie. Howie had been there. She hadn’t been alone. He carried on, forcing himself to forget. The first house was close, a big, wooden thing that might have been a ranch or something. There were horses in the garden, a few of them looking up at him with big black eyes, their tails swishing. What was he going to do? Knock on the door and ask for a sandwich? Just go in and help himself? It’s not like the owners could stop him, not now.

He’d taken another few steps when a door opened in the house, an old woman stepping out. She was holding a basket of something, washing maybe, and was so focused on getting down the porch steps that it took her a while to notice Brick. When she did, she flinched.

‘Hello?’ she said in an American accent. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m hungry,’ he said, not sure what else to say. ‘I haven’t eaten in a while.’

‘Oh . . .’ The woman backed up towards the door as Brick kept on walking. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go. We don’t feed migrants here. There’s a town around the lake where you might be able to find a . . . a . . .’

Brick cocked his head, trying to make out what she was saying. Her words were long and wet, shapeless, and one side of her face had sloped, as though she was having a stroke. She made a noise like a vomiting dog, the basket slipping from her fingers, spilling laundry over the ground. Then she was running, coming straight for him, her eyes two blisters of hate almost bursting from her face. Brick swore, retreating. How the hell could he have forgotten about the Fury?

‘Wait,’ he said, turning, tripping on his own legs. He fell, landing awkwardly, a bolt of lightning-sharp pain firing up his left wrist. He pushed himself up but it was too late, the old lady’s hands around his neck, her nails digging into the skin of his throat. He gagged at the sudden stench of BO and perfume, crying out as her fingers gouged a path up his cheek.

Panic ignited the force inside him, the
whump
of flames filling his ears, followed by the thrum of the angel. He launched himself upwards, turning as he went, seeing the old lady’s arms disintegrate into ash. Still she reached for him, though, choking on the dust of her own body, the nubs of her shoulders swivelling.

‘Go away!’ he said, the words causing the old woman to erupt into a red mist, blasting the wooden house into splinters. The force of it knocked him back and he cried out again, a sound that hit the lake like a rocket, the water erupting.
Calm down,
he ordered himself, not daring to move, just hovering there above the frozen grass. There was movement from the other houses now, people brought out by the sound of the explosion.

Time to go. He rose up, ready to fire himself away from this place, feeling the air around him twitch and wobble as the angel started to pull reality apart. He was on the verge of transporting, the world beginning to melt away, when he spotted the shape in the sky – another flame, just like his. He stopped, peering into the sun as the angel got closer. It would be Daisy, coming to plead with him. It wouldn’t work. He’d made up his mind.

Leave me alone,
he said, keeping his words inside his head this time where they wouldn’t do any harm, knowing she’d hear them anyway.
Just go away, Daisy, I’m tired of all this.

She replied, but he couldn’t make any sense of it, catching snippets of words,
tall boy, broken doll
, and was that Daisy’s voice or—

Rilke
, he realised, and by the time he’d thought her name she was on him, a scream ripping across the valley hard enough to create a tsunami of dirt. The shockwave punched him backwards, through the wreckage of the farmhouse and the one behind it. He curled his wings around himself, the fire protecting him, but there was no time to recover before she attacked again. He felt himself lifted off the ground, and
now
there was pain, like his spine was being ripped out. Rilke swam up before him, her burning fingers dancing in the air, pulling invisible wires in his skin.

Here he is,
she said, her words echoing around the dome of Brick’s skull.
Here he is, Schiller, the tall boy. Shall we break him? Shall we pull off his wings like a butterfly? Mother will be so proud.

Her face was an angel’s, her eyes two pockets of rancid sunlight, and yet past the fire, barely visible, he could see the girl’s true expression – and it terrified him. It was loose, slack, like a badly painted doll. There was still a hole in her head, the one he had made. She had always been mad, but he’d done this to her. Anything good left in her had leaked out of that hole, dribbled away. It had left her a broken, empty thing.

No!
he said, struggling against her.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!

She wrenched his head up, like she was trying to pull the cork from a bottle. He spat out a gargled cry, his arms cartwheeling. Something popped, a vertebra, and this time he fought back, shouting at Rilke, letting his angel speak. The word fired upwards, rumbling across the valley like thunder. It missed her and he tried again, screaming this time, his ears ringing with the strength of it. It struck her like a sledgehammer, but he didn’t wait to see what would happen. He closed his eyes, burned a hole in the world and stepped through.

He fell, the rush of wind stealing every breath from his body. He crunched off the side of the ravine, the pain lost in the roar of adrenalin. Then he was spinning, hitting the wall again, everything going black.

Just work, oh God please work.

There was no indication that the angel was waking. But it was
so
cold down here, freezing. He felt as if he was plummeting into the heart of a glacier, one that had no end, no bottom.

Another impact, although there was no pain this time.
Come on, you bastard, it’s now or never
. If he hit the bottom of the ravine before transforming then both he and his angel would die. The chill was spreading, seeming to radiate from his chest. He tried to look at his hands but it was too dark and he was falling too fast, spinning in wild circles. How much longer did he have? Seconds?

Come on,
he said, feeling like a skydiver whose parachute had to be opened by someone else.
Come on, come on.

Something burst from his skin, a flicker of flame that was blown out instantly by the wind.

That’s it!

Another trembling flame swept over his body, fading as fast as it had appeared. In the flash of light he could see the walls of the ravine narrowing. He was going to hit the bottom, he was going to—

He felt it surge up from inside him, a cold shape that clawed its way free of his soul, screaming like a newborn baby as it erupted into fire. He balked at the horror of it, fighting it, suddenly wanting to die rather than be host to the creature inside him. He thrashed, the movement jerking him sideways
through
the rock, shattering it into splinters. He opened his mouth and unleashed a howl that cracked open the rockface, splitting it like an axe through wood. He cried out again, feeling two impossible shapes fold themselves out of his spine, sails of pure energy that cleaved through everything around him, carrying him upwards until he burst from the ground.

He forced himself to stop, to hang there a hundred metres up, the land laid out below him. His horror was gone, replaced by an excitement that roiled inside his gut. The angel thrummed, its fire in every cell, the sonic pulse of its heartbeat making the air sing. He’d never imagined it would feel like this, as though he could take the whole world in his fist and crush it. He’d never imagined it would feel so
good
. Every other emotion – the fear, the helplessness he’d felt just minutes before – was gone.

‘About—’ he said, the word rocketing from his mouth so hard that he did a backflip. He thrust out his wings as though he’d had them all his life, steadying himself. His lips tingled with the force of the word and he finished inside his head, thinking,
About time. I didn’t think you were ever going to show up.

If the angel understood him it showed no sign of it. He felt no glimmer of humanity there, nothing familiar at all. He pulled in his wings, starting to dive. The roar of wind in his ears reminded him of playing football, the sheer joy of running as fast as he could. The world rushed up to meet him, a constellation of golden particles, billions upon billions of them, each moving in its own little orbit, every single one connected in some way. He could dive right through them if he wanted, part reality like a swimmer through water. He laughed, the exhilaration bubbling up his throat as he extended his wings again and came to a halt, remembered
why
the angel was here.

Ahead of him, the horizon was broken. It looked different now, through his angel’s eyes. It wasn’t just that the earth had collapsed there, it had been
erased
. There were pockets of complete emptiness, none of those subatomic cogs and wheels that he could make out everywhere else. The man in the storm had eaten them. He’d left absolutely nothing.

And he was still down there.

Daisy,
he thought, wondering how he could have forgotten her, even for an instant. He focused, pulling himself free of the world again, tracking her. He materialised instantly, life locking the door behind him with a clang that made his head hurt. When the halo of embers had cleared he realised he was back in the forest, Daisy a bundle of rags sitting up against a tree.

Cal switched off the engine of his angel and dropped down beside her. He couldn’t believe how old she looked, bright white streaks in her hair. Her eyes were dark and full of sadness.

‘Daisy,’ he said, walking to her. Specks of dust drifted upwards from her body, defying gravity, as if she was disintegrating. He knelt down beside her and put a hand on her face. She was so cold. ‘Are you okay?’

She shook her head, putting her hand on top of his. The whole forest trembled with the rage of the distant storm, even the birds quiet now.

‘Adam?’ she asked. Cal looked over his shoulder, trying to work out where they were, where he’d left the boy. He opened his mouth to tell Daisy what had happened, only to see her vanish in a pillar of flame. The air popped as it filled the space she had just occupied, barely having time to settle before she reappeared in a storm of glowing ash, Adam clamped to her chest. The boy’s eyes bulged, and he sprayed milky vomit over her shirt.

‘Sorry,’ she said to him, wiping his mouth. Adam was shaking, but Cal wasn’t sure if it was because he was scared or if it was just the tremors from the ground.

‘What happened?’ Cal asked. ‘Did you see him down there? The man in the storm, I mean.’

Daisy nodded, swallowing noisily.

‘He’s even more powerful than before,’ she said. ‘He almost ate me. I . . . think I saw . . .’

She sighed, her whole body juddering.

‘Saw what?’ Cal asked.

‘Where he comes from,’ she replied. ‘What he is.’

He sat down next to her on the soft, wet ground, put his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t push her, just waited for her to find her words.

‘Do you know about black holes?’ she asked eventually. Cal nodded.

‘Yeah, of course. Collapsed stars or something.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But they eat stuff, don’t they? Like, everything. Light. They just eat until there’s nothing left.’

‘Daisy,’ he started, but he had nothing to follow it with.

‘The man in the storm, he’s like a black hole,’ she said, smudging a tear from her eye. ‘Because he’ll never stop, not until . . .’ She swung her arms up. ‘Not until everything is gone.’

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey, Daisy, it’s okay. It’s not a black hole, it can’t be.’

But maybe something like one, he thought, something just as powerful. Was she right? Would it keep eating and eating until the whole planet was just dust? Would it stop then or would it swallow the moon too, and the sun, turn this little pocket of the universe inside out?

Daisy looked up at him, sniffing, just that little girl he’d picked up in his car a million years ago. It was eating her, too. The fear, the doubt. The storm had sucked up everything else. He saw the question in her expression.

‘We
can
beat it, Dais. We have to.’

She nodded, taking a deep breath, seeming to steady herself.

‘We need all of us,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘All of us? You mean Brick? Wasn’t he in there with you?’

‘He ran away,’ she said. He opened his mouth, ready to vent, but she beat him to it. ‘He’s just scared, Cal, it’s not his fault. He’ll come back, I know he will.’

Don’t count on it,
he thought. This was Brick, after all. He’d let the whole world burn if it meant saving his own ass.

‘Where’s the new guy?’ Cal asked. ‘Was he with you or did he run away too?’

‘Howie. He was there. I . . . I don’t know where he went. Do you think he’s okay?’

Cal hadn’t felt another death, not like when Chris had been killed back at Fursville. He looked around, wondering where Marcus was. Rilke, too.

‘She’s gone after Brick,’ Daisy said. ‘I tried to talk to her, but . . .’

‘But she’s Rilke,’ he said.

‘And she’s broken, Cal. Brick hurt her too much, I don’t think she can be fixed. We need her back, though. We need everyone, or we won’t be able to fight him.’

Schiller was dead. And Jade, snuffed out like a candle flame. How much longer before Rilke’s butchered body ground to a halt as well? There were others, too. The man with the gun, back in Fursville, the one that Rilke had shot. He’d had an angel inside him. The person in the burning car, the one he’d passed when he was driving out of London. The people that Marcus had travelled with. They had been killed on the way. How many more?

There might have been dozens of us,
he thought.
Hundreds.
But they never stood a chance, not with the Fury. Why was it like that? It didn’t make any sense.

‘I don’t think the angels had a choice,’ Daisy said, coughing again. ‘When they cross over from their world they have to get inside the first person they see, or they won’t survive.’

How did she know that?

‘I just think it, that’s all. And there aren’t hundreds of us. I don’t think there is anyone left, only us.’

Cal shook his head, staring between the trees. The sky was darker now, over the pit. It was like a million machine guns being fired, artillery shells barking deep beneath the ground.

‘Only us,’ Daisy said. ‘But it’s enough, Cal. We’re enough. You’re right, we can beat him.’

She smiled at him, and he caught sight of something, a memory that leaked from inside her head, carried on the wind like a smell. Two people in a bed, asleep, as still as waxwork dummies.

‘I . . . I’m not scared,’ she said.

Daisy held out her hand and he took it, clasping her bird-bone fingers.

‘So how do we do it?’ he asked. She didn’t have time to reply before there was a clatter of branches. A skinny figure ducked under a tree and skidded to a halt beside them. Marcus grinned, his face crisscrossed with scratches.

‘Thought you could hide from me, eh?’ he said. Daisy laughed, the sound somehow louder than the thundering earth.

‘You okay, mate?’ said Cal. ‘Found a way down?’

‘No, you found a way up,’ he said. ‘So what’s the plan? Fly home, grab a cuppa?’

Cal smiled despite himself. How could he be so relaxed? He didn’t understand why they weren’t all curled up in a corner somewhere, screaming and sobbing and pulling out their hair. Wasn’t this enough to drive a person crazy, leave them a gibbering wreck? It could still be the shock of it, he guessed, a delayed reaction. If they got through this, they might all end up in the loony bin.

‘It’s the angels, silly,’ said Daisy, once again plucking the thoughts from his head. ‘They’re keeping us safe in more ways than one.’

‘You need to stay out of my brain, Daisy,’ he said. ‘I’m a teenage boy. There are things in there you don’t want to see.’

‘Like Georgia?’ she said, giggling again.

‘Shut up,’ he said, reaching into her head, seeing a boy there, on stage, the image so clear it could have been his own memory. ‘Or I’ll start going on about Fred.’

‘Hey!’ she said, backhanding him gently. ‘Don’t go there, mister.’

They laughed, quietly, then sat in silence listening to the distant storm.

‘Seriously,’ said Cal. ‘How do we beat him?’

‘First things first,’ said Daisy. ‘We find Brick, and the others. We can’t do this without them.’

‘Easier said than . . .’ Cal stopped, cocked his head. His ears were ringing, like the morning after a concert. ‘Hey, you hear that?’

‘It’s stopped,’ said Daisy.

That’s what it was. The storm had grown quiet, so suddenly and so completely that the silence in the forest was almost unnerving. He stuck a finger in his ear, flexing his jaw.

‘You think it’s gone?’ Marcus asked.

‘No,’ said Daisy, sitting forward, her eyes darting back and forth as she listened. ‘I don’t think so. It’s just moved.’

‘Moved where?’ Cal asked.

The ringing in his ears grew louder, and the forest lit up, full of fire. A shape crashed between the trees, thudding into the soil, glowing with such strength that Cal couldn’t make out the person inside until the flames guttered out. He blinked the spots of light from his vision, seeing the new kid crouching on the ground.

‘Howie!’ said Daisy. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m okay,’ he said hoarsely, spitting out a gob of black phlegm. ‘Got lost when I transported, or whatever it is. Somewhere dark, cold. Thought I was never gonna get back. What about you, saw you get sucked in.’

‘I got out,’ she said.

Howie rolled on to his backside, looking exhausted. He looked frightened too. ‘I think he saw me.’

‘Saw you?’ Cal asked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The man in storm,’ Howie said. ‘I think he knows where I went. I think he’s coming.’