The Storm (26 page)

It rose like a rocket, trailing a plume of impossibly dark smoke. The air trembled in its wake. Cal darted to one side as part of the city fell past him, disintegrating as it went. There were buildings there, office blocks that crumbled as they rose, screaming faces visible inside. Cal tucked his arms in, burning up through the sky, seeing the world shrink. The horizon was bent into a curve, the sky growing dark, stars appearing even in the middle of the day.

Howie flew up beside him. Daisy was there too, on the offensive again, her shouts impossibly loud and bright as they slammed into the body of the beast.

Marcus was gone, smashed into the earth so hard that even his angel couldn’t save him. Cal had felt the moment that the boy died, a split second of agony, then nothing.

Don’t think it,
he told himself.
Don’t let the emotions take over.

Cal lashed out with his mind, bolts of energy searing their way up his throat, vanishing into the darkness. The storm was still rising, perfectly camouflaged against the emptiness of space. Only the flashes of fire inside his throat gave him away, looking like underwater explosions.
Brick,
Cal thought, knowing that the boy was trapped in there with Rilke. They both needed help.

A tongue of black lightning cracked through the air beside Cal, detonating with enough force to set off a tuning-fork ring in his ear. He rolled, shouting out at the same time, his cry ripping through the storm. It wasn’t doing any good, like firing slingshot pellets at a tank. They couldn’t get past its armour.

He had to get closer.

Howie,
he called out, seeing the other boy below him, suspended over the blue curve of the earth. He hadn’t realised how high they had come, and suddenly panicked that he wouldn’t be able to draw breath up here before remembering that he didn’t need to. His guts churned in a sudden rush of vertigo and he had to look up to steady himself. He sensed Howie approach.

Yeah?
the other boy said.

Can you distract it? I need to get up there.
Cal pointed towards its mouth, so dark it looked like a hole in space.

I’ll see what I can do,
he replied, breaking away, leaving a trail of light behind him as he arced upwards. The beast reached out for him but he was too quick, darting left and right to avoid the lightning. Something else was happening inside the storm, the turbine of its mouth turning once again. It made no noise in the vacuum of space, but Cal could feel its power as it started to reel him in. He didn’t fight it, this time, just tucked in his wings and let himself rise. Below, something strange was happening to the clouds, running across the surface of the planet like soapy water in the bath. A tunnel of vapour snaked up, jolting Cal as it funnelled past.
What the—
was as far as he got before he understood that it was devouring the atmosphere, the air, the oxygen.

Stay calm, don’t think about it.

He put his head down, rising faster, slowing only when he heard Daisy’s voice inside his head.

Cal!
he looked to see her there, her wings outstretched. It was as though she was made of burning magnesium, a flare so bright that even with his angel’s eyes he had to look away.

You okay?
he asked.

I was wrong,
she said. She stopped next to him and he risked looking again, feeling as if he was hovering next to the sun.
Cal, we have to let go. The angels want us to use our emotions, it’s the only way to make them strong enough.

What? How do you know?

I just do,
she said.
It’s okay to be scared.

No, she was wrong. Fear would only make him weak. He’d learned that over and over again in his martial arts classes – stay focused, never get angry, never get scared, or you were guaranteed to lose. Centre yourself, let everything wash over you, focus, then strike.

Wait here,
he said.
Look after Adam.

He ignored her protests, blasting up until the spinning chasm of the man’s mouth was overhead. From here it looked big enough to swallow the world whole. Those same flashes of fire erupted inside the smoky flesh of its throat, and flickers of sound kept breaking through the deafening weight of silence, mind-voices that might have belonged to Brick and Rilke. Cal was balanced on the lip of a whirlpool, and clenched his teeth against the terror of it.

He folded everything in, feeling himself sucked upwards so violently that he thought he’d left his stomach behind. He tumbled in the churning murk, smelling air and ocean in the vapour around him. The world beneath him shrank away, so small, so vulnerable in its bed of boundless night. Then it too vanished as the storm swallowed him.

As soon as he was inside it he thrust out his wings, turbulence making his head spin. It was like being inside a cave, only one made of roiling smoke. Chunks of earth and city spiralled around him in a silent dance, disintegrating as they collided. Everything here was moving towards a distant point, a speck of absolute darkness.
She was right,
he thought.
It is a black hole.
Between him and it, caught up in the flow of churning matter, was a flickering orb of fire that had to be Brick or Rilke.
Or both of them,
he realised, seeing the two forms inside that thrashed and fought.

Brick!
he called out, sailing towards them. The wind blistered past his ears, trying to grab hold of him, and it was all he could do to resist.
Brick! Rilke!

Help me!
Brick screamed. Jagged bolts of electricity were sparking from them, pumping out a cold, prickling energy that Cal could feel against his skin. He let himself slide closer and lost his grip, suddenly lurching towards the throat. The pull was just too strong. He couldn’t hold himself here, if he got any nearer to them he risked being ripped away.

Brick would have to wait. Cal cried out. Here, beneath the armour of storm, his attack was like a rocket-propelled grenade, sinking deep into the wall before erupting. He opened his mouth again, letting his angel speak, an onslaught of power that cut a path towards the event horizon ahead.

Cal felt the storm shake, a sinking battleship, but the endless inward breath was as strong as ever. He felt himself caught up in it, his angel burning at full strength but still unable to resist the pull. It wasn’t enough.
He
wasn’t enough.

You are, Cal,
he heard Daisy say, a whisper in the middle of his brain.
But you have to use them, you have to be you.

Use what? His emotions? He’d seen what that had done to Brick, to Rilke. It had driven them both mad. Even now he could see it, in the way they scratched and bit and wrestled in the ether.
Clear your mind, focus, strike.

Trust me, Cal.
And he did. More than anything.

He took a deep breath, then set it free – all the fear, all the misery, all the confusion, and all the fury,
his
fury. It ignited in his stomach, in his heart, in his head, a pure, white fire that blazed out from his mouth. The air roared, a shaft of light punching out through the storm, cutting through the skin of cloud, through the tattered flesh. Cal screamed until he thought he would turn himself inside out. The emotion still boiled there, an infinite supply of it, a lifetime of it, giving him strength, giving his angel power. He opened his mouth and cried out again, the world around him igniting.

Rilke had to close her eyes against the sudden brightness of the explosions, but there was no sound, no thunder, just the pathetic cries of the burning boy.

Please, please, just let me go.

Not that he was really burning any more, just the thinnest shimmer covering his skin, and even that was flickering on and off like a candle in the wind. She held him before her, using the hands that weren’t really hands. The world was nothing but smoke and shadow – no ground, no sky, just a tunnel of roiling darkness pockmarked by detonations. It was trying to pull them in, but her wings held them both in place. She was so tired, and so confused, that she couldn’t remember if it had ever been different. Almost everything inside her was used up now, but that was okay. She only had one more job to do, then she could go home and be with her brother again.

But the burning boy just would not die.

She reached out with her not-hands, squeezing the boy’s head. His fire blazed where she touched him, crackling and spitting. It was like a second skin, armoured. She couldn’t get through it. But every doll could be broken. She swung him to the side, smashing him against a floating island of rock, breaking it into splinters.

Please, I’m not who you think I am,
the boy screamed inside her head, his voice the buzzing of a bluebottle, so annoying. Why wouldn’t he just
stop
? She pulled him back towards her, holding him there, studying the molten glow of his eyes. He held out a hand to her.
I didn’t hurt him, it wasn’t me.

Maybe he wouldn’t die because he was telling the truth. Could she break him if he was innocent? But Schiller had been innocent, and he had been broken. Everything was so confusing. She pictured her brother, his beautiful face, so like her own and yet so different. His blond hair, those big, round, blue eyes. The wings of fire that had stretched from his back.

Wait, that couldn’t be right, could it? Her brother wasn’t the boy with wings.

She reached up with her hand, the one that had always been hers, feeling the hole in her head, the ache that pulsed there. How had she got it? Who had done this to her? She had a memory of a blazing figure, an angel with wings, burning through her head with just a thought. The thing before her, the snivelling wreck, was nothing like that.

What was she doing?

Her last reserves of strength drained away. It was too much. All she wanted was to be with Schiller, back in the library at home, in the big bay window seat, drenched in sun, breathing in the heavy, dusty air. They’d always been safe there, safe from outsiders, safe from their mother, safe from the men. That was their space, it always would be.

Schiller,
she said. She loosened the grip of her mind, the boy there already half forgotten as he spun away.
I’m coming,
she said.
Wait for me.

She didn’t know where to go, but surely if she just relaxed then she’d get there. She folded in her wings, feeling the current of air wrap a cold hand around her, pulling her along. Isn’t this what happened when you died? A tunnel? A light at the end? There was nothing at the end of this one, nothing she could see anyway, but she could sense death there, as real and as certain as anything she’d felt in her life.

Help me!
It was the burning boy again, floating alongside her, scrabbling at the air. She ignored him, smiling as she floated gently down the stream, towards the end of it all, towards her brother, into the arms of death.

Let it have her. She was done.

Daisy let loose another shot from the cannon of her mouth, a missile fuelled by the emotions inside her. It needled into the man in the storm’s face, erupting in the smoky flesh. There was almost nothing left of him now, just that gaping mouth, a hole in space that kept turning, gulping down everything it could.

Cal was inside there somewhere. Brick and Rilke too. They were all still alive, she knew that much, but she couldn’t tell whether they were winning or not. Silent explosions threw out webs of light that ebbed into the darkness, and tongues of fire were poking through the skin of cloud.

She stared down, at the blue bowl of her planet. It had always seemed so big, vast, such a long way to go to get anywhere. Now, though, she could stretch out her arms and hold it between them. It looked so fragile.

You can’t have it!
she screamed, turning back, opening her mouth and uttering another cry, one made up of rage. It erupted inside the storm, echoed by another three or four blasts from its throat. Cal. There was no sign of Howie but she could hear him shouting. Adam was close, a speck of light hanging below her. She almost called out to him, to ask if he was okay, before remembering that he couldn’t answer her.

No, not couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.

She paused, closing her mouth, remembering the day that Adam had arrived at Fursville. They’d been sitting around the table, trying to make sense of what was going on, just a few days –
a few million years
– ago. It had been Brick, that was it, going
thump-thump, thump-thump
, scaring the boy. And Adam had screamed, the sound of it tearing across the table, smashing glass, blowing out the candlelight. Fear had done that to him, the cry of his unhatched angel. The only sound he’d made in all the time they’d known him.

Adam!
she called out, diving down to him. He looked so scared, his legs curled up to his chest, his face tucked into his folded arms. He reminded her of a little tortoise, but with a shell made from fire. Only his glowing wings were outstretched, holding him in orbit. They were huge and bright.

She pulled him close with her mind then wrapped her arms around him. The space between them crackled and sputtered, an invisible force trying to separate them; it was like trying to keep a float underwater, but she held on.

I know you’re scared,
she said.
It’s just me, Adam, it’s Daisy. Look at me.

He tilted his head up, those big, burning eyes never blinking. Daisy smiled at him, aching with the effort of holding him close. She wouldn’t let go.

I know this is all crazy. But trust me. I’ll look after you, Adam, always. I promise. Is that okay?

He nodded. Daisy glanced over her shoulder, seeing something forming in the chaos of the storm.

I know it’s scary, but it’s okay to be afraid. We all are. Me, Cal, the new boy, we’re all frightened. I think we’re meant to be.

He frowned up at her, his own face like a ghost’s beneath the skin of fire.

It’s like . . .
She struggled, trying to think of the right words.
Like you know when something really bad happens and you just want to scream? But you don’t, because you don’t want to get told off. Do you know what I mean? Did your mum and dad ever tell you off for shouting and screaming?

He nodded, and she could see a picture there, beamed from his head into hers, a tiny house, packed with junk – not a scrap of floor visible beneath the mess. A living room, full of nasty cigarette smoke and the smell of wine – but not the nice wine her mum and dad sometimes bought, this was something stronger and older. A bedroom, too, full of broken toys. There was no noise allowed here, she understood, even though the television was blaring from the other room, even though she could feel a hunger in her belly that wasn’t really hers, even though she was cold and tired. To make a noise in here would bring
him
in, a man she couldn’t see but who smelled just as old and rotten as the house. Better to stay quiet, to hold it in, to never cry.

Oh Adam,
she said.
Were they really like that, your mum and dad? Were they really so horrid?

He squirmed away, as though embarrassed, but she held on to him, even though it felt as if the space between them was about to explode. Another memory – Adam crying in the dark after a nightmare, a figure slamming open the bedroom door, storming across the room, lashing out so hard that there were stars. She felt the pain as if it was her own, the blood in her mouth, the anger too. She felt the turmoil in her tummy.

He hit you?
she said, incredulous. She had to shut it out, it was so awful. She felt Adam do the same, stuff it deep down where it couldn’t hurt him.

No,
she said.
Don’t run away from it. Use it. All that stuff down there, you need to get it out. It’s like the bad bit in a peach, the rotten bit. If you cut it out it’s fine, but if you leave it there too long it poisons the whole thing.
She shook her head, trying to think of a better way of putting it.
You
need to think about it all, all the anger and sadness and fear. Let it out, Adam, please. Just scream and scream and scream.

Adam’s mouth opened and she could almost feel it bubbling up inside him, so many years of sadness and silence, a dam about to break.

That’s it!
she said.
I knew you could do it, I knew it.

It was so nearly there, so nearly out of him.

Adam’s eyes widened, his face screwing into a mask of horror. Daisy looked up, seeing it too late, a guillotine of smoke that dropped right towards her. She reached out before she even knew what she was doing, opening the door in the world, pushing Adam through it.

You can do this, Adam, I love you.

The air between them exploded like a bomb as they parted, an inferno of white light that sent her spinning out into space.