Rebecca Lim - Fury

‘Two days, three?’ she sobs. ‘I’m not sure when I first actually noticed. What do I do? What do I do? ’

Ryan says fiercely, ‘You get our parents and get the hell out of there. Take Rich with you, too, if you have to, just get them out of town. Tell them anything.’

Uriel and I exchange worried glances, and he murmurs, ‘I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Ryan. Away from Paradise, they might be even more vulnerable to —’

‘Luc’s having the house watched ,’ Ryan explodes. ‘We’re not like you.’ He jabs at the air. ‘You can’t expect me to tell my family to stay there like, like targets !’

I go cold as I remember what Luc said in Milan, inside the limousine, when he’d appeared like a vision to me: Come to me. Only then will you be safe. Flee the Eight and their legion at whatever cost. But if I should somehow fail, then locate that human boy and return with him to the place where he lives, to Paradise. He, too, will play a part in the final reckoning, when all debts due and owing to me shall be met in full and repaid in blood .

‘Send help!’ Ryan says violently, glaring at Uriel. ‘You could do that, right? If you wanted to.’

Uriel frowns. ‘All the elohim and malakhim that can be spared to fight Luc are massing somewhere only Michael knows of, awaiting his orders. He is our Viceroy, the one who commands us in the name of our Lord. But now he’s missing, and I am just one upon this earth; alone except for Mercy, with no word of where the others are. As soon as we locate Gabriel, we’ll send what help we can. But we need to free Gabriel first. It’s imperative.’

‘How is Gabriel more important than the people I love?’ Ryan thunders.

He says into the screen, ‘Get out of town, Lauren, get them out of there. If they don’t know already, don’t tell them why, just make it happen.’

Still weeping, Lauren doesn’t reply, she just hangs up.

Ryan throws his phone at the back of his seat, then strides down the length of the carriage to get away from us, his arms folded around his head in anguish.

He doesn’t come back, not until the train pulls into the station known as Kilometer 104, and he’s forced to get out with us.

Ryan doesn’t meet my eyes, and he won’t look at Uriel at all, as we pull up our hoods against the downpour and walk the four hundred or so feet to a small guardhouse by a narrow suspension footbridge over the tumbling, swollen Urubamba River. The ground is slick and heavy with mud, but I think I’m the only one who notices how Uriel seems to glide across it without stumbling, how the rain and dirt don’t seem to touch him at all.

We line up with all the other trekkers and their local guides and porters — about twenty people at most, some of them clearly having second thoughts about pressing on. Mateo makes his way over to us, his head bent. He’s wearing a hooded, heavy-duty khaki parka over dark pants, a pair of battered shoes in place of the rubber slides he’d been wearing the night before, and a large backpack as wide and almost half as tall as he is. We’d requested no porters the night before, and Uriel looks at the large pack enquiringly as Mateo reaches us.

‘Food, water, rain ponchos, blankets, first-aid kit,’ he explains.

Uriel gestures at him to hand the pack over, offended to see anyone carrying anything on his behalf. Mateo hesitates for a moment, before shrugging it off and passing it to him. Uriel slings the pack over his shoulders, ignoring the waist and chest straps because it weighs nothing to him.

I get the wad of euros Gia gave us out of my pocket and shove them into Mateo’s hand. He hasn’t yet mentioned any kind of payment.

‘This is for you,’ I say. ‘Thirteen hundred and seventy euros, to cover the three of us. It’s everything we’ve got.’

Mateo shakes his head, tries to push the money back into my hands. ‘I can’t take it, señorita ,’ he says earnestly. ‘It is too much. It is only a few hours of walking — you tell me no porters, no bus, no overnight hotel. I would do it for nothing. It is my pleasure.’

‘Please,’ Ryan shouts, over the sound of the rain, ‘take it. If you can’t use it all, share it with Gabino and his family. To thank them for taking care of me, for giving me help exactly when I needed it.’

His voice is bitter and I know he’s thinking of his own family.

Mateo nods, finally, and zips the money away in his jacket. He retrieves some paperwork from another pocket, enclosed in a battered plastic sleeve, and blinks at me, at Ryan, through the rain. ‘Remember that today you are Estelle Jablonski of Mississauga, Canada, and you are her boyfriend, Clive Butler, also of Mississauga, Canada.’

Ryan looks away without replying.

‘And you, señor ,’ Mateo says to Uriel, ‘are Gerry McEntee Junior from Johannesburg, South Africa. Okay?’

Uri shrugs, and Mateo hands out the three permits that bear no relation to any of us. The two bored guards at the checkpoint barely lift their eyes to look at them, and then we’re on the swaying Chachabamba footbridge, white water roaring below.

Ryan’s already in trouble as we begin our ascent up a steep, grassy hillside surrounded by a vast mountain range on all sides, snow lying on distant peaks. From valley to valley, I see dark storm clouds, the occasional flash of lightning. It’s only just after nine in the morning, but we’re moving through a strange kind of grey half-light and even I’m having trouble making out Ryan below us. He’s fallen so far back that another tour group coming up behind has almost overtaken him.

I walk back down the slope towards him. When I reach him, it’s automatic what I do: I take his arm. He’s still so angry that he tries weakly to shrug me off, but I don’t let him. His chest is heaving, the almost horizontal rain running down his face in rivulets, like tears.

‘I’m so far away,’ he grates, as he stumbles along, looking at his feet rather than the astounding, almost prehistoric grasslands around us, and certainly not at me. ‘Anything could be happening. I should be there.’ Then it slips out before he can take it back. ‘I wish I’d never met you.’

‘You don’t really mean that?’ I say, as wounded as if he’d taken a weapon to me. Despite all that has happened, I never wish that. Ryan is synonymous with life for me.

He drops my arm like it’s burning him. ‘I don’t know what I mean. Without you, I wouldn’t have Lauren back. With you, I feel helpless, when I used to be known for my strength and speed.’ His laughter sounds as harsh as his breathing. ‘I’m just some guy you keep around,’ he murmurs. ‘I don’t know why you even bother with me.’

He won’t let me defend us, just holds up a hand to silence me.

‘Don’t go snooping around in my head right now,’ he mutters, ‘because you won’t like what you see there. Go be a superhero, or whatever, with your superhero friends. Just give me some space — I need to think.’

He walks away from me then, deliberately pushing himself to pass Uriel and reach Mateo up ahead, though it looks like it’s killing him to do it. And it’s such a Ryan thing to do that I want to smile as much as I want to cry.

I rejoin Uriel, who’s walking easily. He seems taller, more alive out here, even in his human form, even though the elements are throwing everything they’ve got in our faces. Wind and water. But not fire. We’re bringing the fire.

Ryan falls back again, his face set and miserable, as we continue ascending sharply in driving rain, through the thinning air, thousands of feet up. Mateo warned us the night before that it would take at least three or four hours to reach the first set of ruins along this stretch of the trail, but the punishing pace that Uriel is setting is pushing Mateo, Ryan, even me, to go faster and harder. The other groups we left with are nowhere in sight.