Rebecca Lim: Muse

‘Stay with me,’ I cry, gripping him even more tightly to me so that he struggles briefly, making a small sound of protest. ‘Don’t you dare die on me, not now. Not now we’re finally together.’

‘Sanctuary,’ he mumbles, and he’s barely audible, even to me. ‘We need sanctuary.’

As he says the words, a bolt of lightning hits so close to us that it sends me into freefall. All I see is the Piazza del Duomo rushing up to meet us, and it’s covered in a patchwork of emergency-service vehicles, tents, crash barriers, people, that lit-up Christmas tree that seems like something from another world, another time.

‘Sanctuary,’ Ryan mumbles. ‘Sanctuary.’

I peel off at speed, skimming low over the flashing lights of all the vehicles, circling the square in frustration, Gudrun and the others in pursuit from above and below, closing in.

‘Demons,’ Ryan mumbles. ‘No sanctuary for demons.’

And then I understand what my poor, battered, half-drowned human is trying to tell me.

‘Nullum asylum daemonibus!’ I shriek into the night. No sanctuary for demons.

I scream straight up the neo-Gothic face of the cathedral — hundreds of feet in the air — making for the crazy rooftop crowned by spires and tracery, gargoyles and statuary, the demons in pursuit. Gudrun’s so close I can feel her hot breath upon my heels, feel the sizzle of energy her blade gives out.

As I burst above the roofline, all I see are human figures, each the size of giants, standing in rows upon the carved and fretted spires, hundreds of feet above the ground, their faces turned upon the city of Milan below.

I draw a sharp breath as lightning cracks behind me. For a moment, the figures seem alive, seem to move. I imagine I see disapproval upon their faces as I search frantically for the stairs. Stairs that lead down from the open roof of the cathedral to a walkway on the lower north side. There’s a door there. And then another set of stairs — encased in a stone tower — that people use to access the roof from the ground.

I know it with a certainty born of true memory. I’ve walked those stairs before, been inside that tower. Years ago. The stairs must still be there.

I just need to get down onto the roof and the demons won’t be able to touch me. No sanctuary for demons. No respite for demons in this place.

I feel a piercing pain as the edge of Gudrun’s blade meets my heel and blindly throw myself down at the field of saints and spires, Ryan held tightly in my arms.

Landing is always going to be a problem for me, I realise; it’s that sense of falling, of losing control. We collide with the edge of a spire on the way down. Or, at least, I appear to collide with it. The sensation of solid stone passing straight through my body shocks me so much that I lose my hold on Ryan for the last few feet and he hits the roof at an awkward angle with a dull impact I can almost hear. He rolls a short distance down the pitched roof of the nave, then lies sprawled, face down, unmoving.

Without knowing how I got from where I lost hold of him to where he ended up, I’m already kneeling beside his still form, fear crowding my throat. I roll him over gently, take his face in my hands, and silver tears fall down my cheeks in gratitude, in praise, as I see his pain-filled eyes open.

He looks at me in wonder as he rasps, ‘Are those for me? What happened to the hard ass I fell in love with?’

‘We made it,’ I say shakily. ‘Think you can stand?’

He coughs, grimacing in pain. ‘If you help me, sure.’

But then his eyes close, and I can’t shake him awake. And I realise that there’s blood on his mouth. He’s badly hurt, and it’s all my fault.

Why do I destroy everything I touch? Even the things I … love?

Above me, the two demons wheel as close as they dare, shrieking in their inhuman voices. I know that we need to get on the move by daybreak; we can’t stay here. I make everything around me a target. They will raze Milan around us while they wait for me.

I sling one of Ryan’s arms around my neck, grasp him about his waist and pull him upright easily. He’s a dead weight in my arms, his head of dark hair hanging forward, and I know that I’m running out of time. He’s dying, I can feel it happening beneath my hands. His soul is beginning to cleave away from his body.

‘Azraeil!’ I call out despairingly. ‘You keep away from him, you keep away, do you hear?’

Lightning illuminates the empty rooftop, the sea of slick and treacherous tiles on which we are marooned.

‘Stay with me, Ryan,’ I plead. ‘Stay with me, my love.’

With loving thanks to my husband, Michael, and my children, Oscar, Leni and Yve — for your unstinting love and great patience when I enter the zone.

Thanks also to Lisa Berryman, Liz Kemp, Rachel Denwood, Lizzie Ryley, Natalie Costa Bir, Mel Maxwell and Nicola O’Shea for helping me beat this sucker into shape. Again.

To the wonderful editorial and marketing teams at Disney-Hyperion and Ravensburger Buchverlag — especially Catherine Onder, Stephanie Lurie, Ann Dye, Hallie Patterson, Iris Prael and Marie Kubens — thank you for your expertise, enthusiasm and great care of me and Mercy.

To Teresa Fels — thank you for years of friendship, your out-of-this-world home cooking, and for fixing the Spanish, and the Spanglish.

And to Norma Pilling — thank you for reading the initial drafts of Mercy, Exile and Muse and cheerfully suggesting better Latin and Italian alternatives over cups of coffee and Portuguese custard tarts. Get set for the last one …

This is a work of fiction. Most of the locations described in this book are entirely fictional, as are all of the characters, outfits, artworks and events. Certain authorial liberties may have been taken with those buildings and places that do actually exist in the real world, for which the author apologises and begs your leave.

Mercy ‘wakes’ on a school bus bound for Paradise, a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business — or thinks they do. But they will never guess the secret Mercy is hiding …

As an angel exiled from heaven and doomed to return repeatedly to Earth, Mercy is never sure whose life and body she will share each time. And her mind is filled with the desperate pleas of her beloved, Luc, who can only approach her in her dreams.

In Paradise, Mercy meets Ryan, whose sister was kidnapped two years ago and is now presumed dead. When another girl disappears, Mercy and Ryan know they must act before time runs out. But a host of angels are out for Mercy’s blood and they won’t rest until they find her and punish her — for a crime she doesn’t remember committing …

An electric combination of angels, mystery and romance, Mercy is the first book in a major new series.

All Mercy knows is that she is an angel, exiled from heaven for a crime she can’t remember committing.

So when she ‘wakes’ inside the body and life of eighteen-year-old Lela Neill, Mercy has only limited recall of her past life. Her strongest memories are of Ryan, the mortal boy who’d begun to fall for her — and she for him.

Lela’s life is divided between caring for her terminally ill mother and her work as a waitress at the Green Lantern, a busy city cafe frequented by suits, cab drivers, strippers, backpackers and the homeless, and Mercy quickly falls into the rhythm of this new life.

But when Mercy’s beloved, Luc, reappears in her dreams, she begins to awaken to glimpses of her true nature and her true feelings for Ryan. How can she know that her attempts to contact Ryan will have explosive consequences?

Meanwhile, ‘the Eight’ — responsible for her banishment — hover near, determined to keep Mercy and Luc apart, forever …