The Storm (27 page)

Just like that she was gone.

Cal twisted around, looking back through the churning smoke. One minute Daisy had been there, the next she’d been wrapped in darkness, ripped away. He searched for her in his head but he couldn’t tell if it was her voice he heard or just the echo of it.

Daisy?
he called out. No reply. He beat his wings, pulling against the current, thrashing his way out of the storm. The air beside him erupted into ash, a figure appearing there. Adam flinched when he saw Cal, his wings spasming as he tried to control them.

What happened?
Cal said. The answer was in the little boy’s face as he stared out into oblivion. She was gone. The rage inside Cal was white hot, a supernova that burned in his core. He looked up at the storm, the man who sat fat in his bed of cloud, who gorged on the world.
She was just a girl! You bastard, she was just a girl!
The grief was too much, like it was burning him out from the inside.

He looked at Adam, saw his eyes narrow with the same outrage. The little boy didn’t know how to handle it, the fear, the anger.

But his angel did. Cal could almost see the emotion there, past the transparent haze of his skin. It was like nothing else in the world, no atoms spinning in their orbits, no electrical sparks, just a ball of light, brighter than the sun, rising up the boy’s throat.

Do it,
Cal said.
Please.

Adam opened his mouth and screamed Daisy’s name.

It cut its way free from him like a flame thrower blasting out with a jet-engine roar and bright enough that it leached all the colour from the world. The shockwave hit Cal like a hammer, sending him reeling. He spread his wings, seeing the boy’s fire punch into the storm, slicing its way across the face of the beast. It seemed to go on forever. He could have no air left in his lungs, but still he screamed, an inferno that set the sky alight.

Cal felt the cogs of his mind slip at the sight of it, the
impossibility
of it. It was too much. The angel inside him seemed to feed on the frenzy of his emotion, drawing it from his soul, pulling it up his throat. Cal choked on it, gagging as every single bad thing in his life was suddenly regurgitated. He thought of Daisy, always smiling, always brave, always ready to hug him with those stick-thin arms. Never again, though. She was gone.

He howled at the storm, spewing out an inferno of light and flame, purging himself. The air shook with the power of it, the world beneath him groaning as the physics it rested upon began to fracture. Their voices blazed relentlessly – their fury without end, without mercy.

Their fire was stripping the clouds away from the storm, revealing the pale ribbons of stretched flesh beneath. The engine of its mouth was stalling, spinning then stopping, spinning then stopping. Darkness washed from it, as though it was vomiting out the emptiness behind the universe.

Still Cal screamed, even though he felt as if he was drowning, even though his brain pleaded with him to stop. He didn’t think he could even if he wanted to. He felt like a ghost, like he no longer belonged inside the flesh and bone of his body. If he died now it wouldn’t matter, because his angel was here. It had slipped on his skin like an anorak. It had found a way to make itself real.

That thought was terrifying, and his fear was just more fuel for the fire. It flared out between his lips and he screamed and screamed and screamed.

This was her grave, and it was boundless.

The fist of smoke wrapped itself around her, the same way it had done back in the pit. Only this time it didn’t pull her towards the man in the storm, it thumped her outwards, hurling her away from him, from the planet, from her friends. The coil of liquid night ate into her, spreading across her mouth and her face, smothering her, blinding her. Her angel was working at full strength, fighting it. But it couldn’t last for much longer. She could feel its pain in every cell, its exhaustion. They would die together, in the cold, dark void of space.

No,
it was too horrible. She didn’t want it all to end here, where there was no sunshine and no birds and no flowers. How would she find her mum and dad? She cried out, her voice muffled by the cushion of smoke against her face. She ripped at it with her fingers, tearing at the shroud, peeling it back in time to see a huge silver medallion in the sky ahead. It took her panicked mind a moment to understand that it was the moon, and a heartbeat later she hit it, punching through white rock. She detonated out again in a shower of debris, still not slowing. She felt like a fish, hooked by a dark barb, being reeled out of the ocean.

It was getting colder, and something was happening to her head – her vision flickering. The smoke wrapped itself around her and it was as if death already had her, everything so dark, so quiet, apart from the thrashing hum of her angel’s heart. It was eating into her, dissolving her. When she tore at it again there was no sign of the earth, no sign of anything other than the stars.

No!
she screamed. This time she thought she heard a reply, somewhere deep down inside her. It was a voice she knew, but she had to wait for it to come again before she believed it.
Mum? Is that you?

It wasn’t. How could it be? It was just a piece of her brain trying to keep her calm. She didn’t care. It was so nice to see them, her mum and her dad, in the stuttering light of her imagination. Pain clawed up her back as the smoke continued to burrow into her, her fire ebbing. Once it was gone she would have no more defence against the storm. At least it would be quick.

She closed her eyes. Her parents were there, and she smiled at them. It felt like so long. She took herself to them, back to the day they’d had the picnic in the garden. Her mum had been too weak to go any distance but she’d made it outside with their help, lying on the blanket in the shade of the next-door neighbour’s trees. One of Mrs Baird’s cats had tried to run off with her dad’s lunch while he was in the kitchen making tea. Daisy had chased it halfway back to the fence, picking up the chicken drumstick from the flowerbed and dusting it off.

‘He’ll never notice,’ she’d told her mum. He’d come back and taken a bite out of it, and she and her mum had rolled around on the floor like monkeys, giggling so hard she hadn’t been able to breathe – especially when he’d pulled a clump of cat hair from between his teeth.

Daisy laughed now. The hum of her angel heart grew louder and she could feel the sudden roar of her fire as it flared up.

It’s laughing too,
she realised. The sensation of it was like nothing she had ever felt, like her whole body was made of sound. Even though she was surely too far away to find her way back, even though the smoke meant to bury her in the endless nothing of the universe, she was smiling.

What else was there? The time they’d gone to a salmon farm in Scotland, and her dad had tried to ride the aerial slide over the lake. He’d sat on the wrong bit and ended up waist deep in water – even though he’d spent the whole day telling her not to get wet. They’d had to send out a little boat to rescue him. She giggled, her tummy aching, the fire blazing as though she’d turned a gas hob to its highest setting.

She didn’t understand where they came from, these memories, but her head was suddenly full of them, each one brighter than the last. Her angel was like a child hearing music for the first time, blazing inside and out. Its own laughter pulsed from every pore, so alien and yet utterly familiar too. It was a not-sound in her skull, a chime like bells. It chiselled against the smoke like a physical thing, splitting it, casting off squirming ribbons of night.

You’re pathetic!
she said, talking to the man in the storm, to the beast who raged in the sky so far behind her. It could eat all it wanted but it could never win, not really. How could it ever triumph when there was laughter in the world?
I’m not scared of you, you’re a joke, a big fat stupid joke!

Her laughter – her
angel’s
laughter – exploded against the smoke, breaking it into wisps. Beyond them was an expanse of stars so immense that she couldn’t take it all in. It was as if she hung in the centre of a vast, hollow planet whose crust was speckled with diamonds. There were millions of them, billions, all different colours, all so far away. She spun, mesmerised, terrified, thinking
Which one is mine? Oh God which one is it?
Even with her angel’s eyes the stars all looked the same. She could fly to any one of them with just a thought, but it would take her the rest of time to find her way home. She was going to die out here, but she didn’t have to die alone.

She folded her wings around herself, letting the memories pour through her like daylight. The angel lapped them up, feeding on them, growing stronger, its fire so bright that she felt that she had to take a step back in her own head. It wanted more, she understood.

She thought back, searching for them. The time Chloe’s chair broke beneath her in English one day and she’d pretty much rolled right out of the door. Daisy had almost weed herself through laughing so much.

Despite the fear, Daisy laughed, her angel laughed, the sound of it blasting away the last of the smoke. This time, even the vacuum of space permitted it, the sound echoing in her ears. It had never heard laughter. All the way out here there was only absence. There had only ever been absence, infinite and unbearable. This place, the emptiness between the stars, was what
he
liked, the man in the storm. He wanted to wipe everything else away so this would be all that was left.

Well she wouldn’t let him, she
wouldn’t
. She would fill it all up with laughter.

Fursville this time, riding the horses of the carousel with Adam and Jade. Then playing tag, chasing each other over the sun-drenched ground, Brick’s gangly legs slipping on the gravel, his giggles high-pitched and surprising. The Fury hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered. Right then, in spite of everything,  she’d been happy.

She laughed, the angel blazed, swept up by the wonder of it. It emanated a silent chime that cut across the void, which found an echo in the other angels, a call that led the way home.

Daisy stretched her wings, tuned in, burned out.

Brick swam against a current that was way too strong for him, his arms and legs useless against the flow of air. He was still burning, but he didn’t have the energy to transport himself. Rilke had done her best to kill him and she must have come close, everything ached, everything felt wrong. His angel had taken the brunt of it, and now it was running on fumes.

The storm raged around him, sucking him into its throat, back towards the hole at the end of the world. Pieces of planet floated past, breaking up as they went, and through the debris he caught glimpses of
her
, Rilke, burning as bright as the sun but refusing to fight. He didn’t understand what she was doing. It was as though she’d given up. If she wanted, she could pull them both out of here. She was injured, yes, but only her human body. Her angel was still running at full strength.

Rilke!
he called again, for what must have been the hundredth time.
Please, don’t do this!

The storm shook, those same ear-pounding artillery shells detonating somewhere outside. There was something else now as well, something that roared even louder than the hurricane. Whatever it was, it had to be working, because the clouds were spinning more slowly, the current weaker.

Not weak enough. He slid down the gullet of the beast, unable to find purchase. It was going to swallow him whole, into the empty infinity of its stomach. The thought of it – an eternity of nothing, an eternity alone – made him howl, the noise coming as much from his angel as from him. He didn’t want to die alone. He’d been by himself for so long, not letting anybody in, not even Lisa. His anger had always filled him up, he’d never made room for anything else.

Rilke, wait!
he called to her. If she heard him she made no sign of it, floating downstream in her web of fire. He scrabbled in mid-air, feeling like a parachutist in free fall. Beating the current was one thing, but crossing it was another. She was slightly ahead of him, and he wheeled his arms and legs, steering closer –
Hold on, for Christ’s sake
– maybe ten metres, then five.

The air between them began to spark, as though somebody was letting off firecrackers. Invisible fingers pushed him back, and he thought it might be her, trying to shunt him away. She was smiling, though, like she was in the middle of a waking dream.

Rilke!
he said, using the last of his strength to push himself towards her. Bolts of energy fizzled up his arm as he grabbed her foot. He climbed her like a ladder, too frightened to let go. Just like before, when they’d been fighting, the hum of their hearts rose in pitch, sounding as if they were about to blow up. He hugged her, just grateful to have somebody next to him as he spun towards the end.

What do you want?
Rilke asked, staring blindly from the shell of her body.

What was he supposed to say? That he didn’t want to be on his own when the beast devoured him? He didn’t reply, just clung on. It couldn’t be much longer now, the event horizon dead ahead, clouds of matter spiralling around it as they were crushed into dust and sucked inside. Even sound was being pulled in, leaving nothing but silence.

It’s not too late,
he said, his voice impossibly loud against the quiet.
You can get us out of here.

I’m tired,
she replied.
I just want to go home. I want to see Schiller.

The storm rocked again, pieces of it crumbling away as the attack continued outside. He clung to Rilke with trembling arms, feeling the pressure build between them. He couldn’t hold on for much longer, but he didn’t need to. In seconds he would simply disintegrate; it would be as if he had never existed.

We don’t want you here,
Rilke said. Finally her eyes turned to him, two pools of molten lead and a third in the middle of her forehead, the one he’d made. She lifted her arms and pushed him, but he held on as best he could.
It’s just me and my brother. Go away.

No,
he said.

Go away!

She shunted him hard, almost slipping out of his hands. They were deep into the deafening silence now, sliding towards the black hole. Rilke was already coming apart, pieces of her crumbling loose as though she were made of sand. Her angel blazed, trying to hold her together. Brick pulled her close again, his terror so intense that it almost didn’t register at all. The air between them pulsed, spitting liquid fire, but he fought it. He would not let go, he would not face the end by himself.

A blinding flash, and suddenly he was inside a room, a library, watching motes of dust drift lazily between the shelves. Schiller sat on a window seat opposite him, his breath misting up the glass. There was nothing out there but gold, as if the room floated in an ocean of sunshine. Brick was crying, but he understood that these weren’t his tears, they belonged to someone else, to
Rilke
.

‘He’s gone,’ said Schiller, turning to Rilke – to Brick. ‘I won’t let him hurt you again, I promise.’

‘I know, little brother, I know,’ he heard himself say. ‘We’ll keep each other safe, forever. I love you.’

Schiller leant forward and hugged him and the memory –
Was that what it had been?
– faded. It had been so real that Brick had almost forgotten about the man in the storm, about the black hole at the bottom of its throat. He looked at Rilke, seeing her life as if it had been his own – her dad long gone, her mum insane, and the man, the
bad
man who said he was a doctor. His face loomed up, his breath stinking of coffee and alcohol, his nails long and dirty. Brick almost screamed, forcing the memory away, the pain that came with it. He scrabbled, trying to keep hold of Rilke, knowing that she needed him as much as he needed her.

I don’t,
she said.
I have Schiller. I’ll always have him.

He’s not in there,
Brick said, both of them dissolving in the dark light of the black hole.
There’s nothing in there, it’s empty. Schiller’s gone.

Their eyes met, and he realised that deep down, past the madness, past the exhaustion, she knew the truth.

It doesn’t matter,
she said.
I’ll find him.

She smiled, her lips bursting into ash. Brick felt his fingers slip as her body fell apart, tried to scoop her up in his hands, to hold her together. As soon as they parted the air between them ignited, the same nuclear detonation as before, blowing him back up the throat of the beast. He rolled like a spinning top, pushed on by a rippling wave of energy. He called Rilke’s name, reaching back for her with his hands, with his mind, trying to pull her along with him.

But it was too late. She was gone.