by Rebecca Lim
I can’t see Ryan anywhere.
‘Multiply what you see by life universal,’ Uriel says acidly, ‘then tell me you have any other choice but to quit this sphere.’
‘Can you see him? Ryan?’ I ask despairingly, and Uriel shoots me a look of revulsion as he moves forward into that clamouring sea of people.
He looks awkward in the human form he’s assumed; like a smaller version of himself but with a floppy, college-boy haircut, thin steel-framed glasses, and wearing preppy clothes like those we saw on the giant advertising billboards we flew past to get here. It took him more than a few tries to get the look of his skin right, but there’s no telltale gleam now on the surface of his neck, face or hands. He’s getting more than a few glances because he looks too perfect, almost too neat, clean, handsome, but he definitely passes muster as some uptight, matchy-matchy rich kid on his way home from an overseas holiday. Beside him, I look incredibly dowdy in my usual human get-up of black down jacket, black sweater, grey jeans and boots, hair slung back in a messy ponytail.
‘I look ridiculous,’ Uri says through gritted teeth. ‘Remind me again what he looks like, this Ryan?’
His expression turns to shock as I say distractedly, ‘He looks like Luc … like Luc if he’d been born human, and kind, but with dark hair, dark eyes …’
My voice trails away as something catches my eye. It’s so small, so very faint, just one light among millions, but it’s moving in an erratic fashion, winding in and out of the screaming Christmas decorations and glowing airline insignias, moving up the sides of crazily lit-up vending machines and roving across the faces of the sleeping, as if it’s searching for something, or someone. But then it vanishes into a bank of flickering TV screens and doesn’t reappear. Maybe I imagined it. This place is lit up like an amusement park.
‘Let’s split up,’ I say, indicating the half of the room that I want Uri to take. ‘It’ll be faster.’
I’m already walking away before Uriel’s had a chance to answer me. I want to get to Ryan first, because I don’t want Uri to see me with him. There’s nothing I can truly call mine in this world except Ryan, and I’m about to let him go. What I have to say to him doesn’t require a witness who possesses perfect recall; recall eternal.
I concentrate on all the disparate energies in the room, trying to pick Ryan’s. But there’s so much noise in here, so much distraction, that I’m having trouble tuning it out. Every braying laugh, snore or angry conversation pulls my focus from place to place.
Uri’s well out of sight when that small, coin-sized gleam of light reappears at my feet like a puppy anxious to please. The malakh I first met on a street corner in Australia is so weak now, so dissipated, that I no longer feel any fear or uneasiness around it. It’s so near death now that if its last act in life is to seek me out, then who am I to deny it?
‘If you know where he is,’ I plead, ‘take me to him?’
The light seems to regard me steadily for a second, before oscillating, as if in response. It leads me without hesitation through a multitude of slumped or sleeping bodies towards a bank of empty luggage carousels, the steel conveyor belts silent and still. Rounding the edge of one, I see the familiar backpack first, then the tall young man leaning against it, playing with his mobile phone.
Ryan looks up and sees me, and the smile that lights his face stops me in my tracks.
‘Mercy!’ he cries gladly and leaps to his feet.
As he does, the malakh, as if startled into flight, darts up the face of the giant advertising poster on the wall and disappears.
Ryan pulls me to him, but then sees my expression. ‘What’s wrong?’ he says instantly, his smile dying, his arms tightening about me like a vice.
I lay my head against his shoulder and the feel of him — his familiar energy and clean, male smell — brings on another fall of tears. They spill onto the battered leather of his jacket, gleaming there momentarily like the embers of a dying fire.
‘I love you.’ I’m sobbing, hardly coherent. ‘I love you, and I’m so sorry.’
There, I’ve done it, I’ve finally said the words, and just like that, all the time we ever had together is gone, it’s over. We’re into overtime now, penalty time. Any moment, Uri will tap me on the shoulder and I will never see Ryan again in this life.
Ryan forces me to look at him, and his hands move to either side of my face. He smears the tears away with the pads of his thumbs as fast as they come.
‘Hey,’ he says, ‘whoa. I missed you, too. But I didn’t mind, it hasn’t been that long. I would have been happy to wait longer. I’m just glad you’re back.’
He pulls me into him again, breathing me in, kissing my hairline, breathing out all his anxiety, his tension.
‘I love you, too,’ he murmurs joyously, looking down into my eyes. ‘And there’s nothing to be sorry about. We got there in the end, right? It wasn’t so hard to say.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I wail softly. ‘Uriel is here, with me. He says this is it. It all ends now, for you and me. I came to say goodbye. This is goodbye.’
‘What?’ Ryan’s dark brows snap together as he scans the arrivals hall feverishly, before returning his gaze to me. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
I shake my head, and my fiery tears fall and fall as if they will never end. ‘Uriel’s here to make sure that I do it — that I leave. So I’m finally telling you now: that I love you, and that I’ll always miss you, and that I’m sorry.’
Ryan’s gone rigid in my arms. I can feel his horror in the way he’s suddenly stopped breathing, in the way he’s completely speechless.
‘Get yourself … home,’ I say haltingly, pulling back from him so I can see his face. ‘I’ll make Them watch over you, over Lauren, every single day. I’ll make sure Luc never has the opportunity to go after you. They have to do that much for me. They have to. You’ve been through enough.’
I give him a false, tremulous smile and say pleadingly, ‘Find a nice girl — you can do way better than me, better even than that Brenda. And have a great, great life.’ A sob rises again in my throat.
‘I’ll see you again,’ I insist through my tears. ‘I’ll see you again. It will seem like today has been … just a lengthy wait in an anonymous arrivals hall somewhere. But I’ll find you, one day, and maybe then we can be together for always.’
Ryan’s opening his mouth but no words are coming out, and he tips his head up for a moment, just gazing up at the ceiling. When he finally looks at me, his eyes are red-rimmed and his voice is harsh. ‘Mercy, I —’
But then a gloved hand grips his shoulder.
It’s such an unexpected thing that we both just stare at it for a moment before taking in the person that’s joined to it. It’s a man in a dark uniform — dark trousers, dark shoes, dark vest — and a white shirt. He’s pale-skinned, clean-shaven, bespectacled, unremarkable. There’s a cloth badge picked out in black and gold upon his shirt-sleeve, and a sprinkling of grey through his short, black hair.
He doesn’t say anything to us; just gives us a view of his partner standing behind him — younger, similarly turned out — and inclines his head sharply to indicate that he wants us to follow them. Both men are Japanese, of average height and build, and both are sweating heavily in this overheated room. I can see their perspiration gleaming beneath the lights. The energy they give out seems muted, but it’s indisputably human.
Still, it seems odd that they don’t try to talk to either Ryan or me, or even to each other, though both of them are staring intently at Ryan’s face, as if they’ve seen him somewhere before.
Ryan and I glance at each other edgily, and he picks up his backpack from the floor. The official grasps his shoulder more tightly in his gloved hand and begins to walk so that Ryan is forced to follow, our bag trailing from his fingers.
‘Uh, I’m sorry, but you must have me confused with someone else,’ he says. ‘I’m not boarding a flight or anything. Uh, excuse me, sir? Sir?’
The m
en don’t acknowledge me at all, so all I can do is follow behind as they take Ryan through a set of automatic doors that immediately cut us off from the overcrowded waiting area. We’re in some kind of processing area now, filled with machines that look like giant, shiny steel portals. It’s virtually empty.
A couple of middle-aged Japanese women in uniform are seated near the gleaming portals. They nod deferentially as the officials gesture curtly that they’re going to walk Ryan through one of them.
Ryan drops the bag at his feet in resignation. ‘You’re not going to find anything,’ he says under his breath.
One of the women beckons Ryan forward with her gloved hand, and the man pushes him through one of the metal portals with unnecessary force. A small square light on the side turns green. I’m standing just behind the woman’s shoulder and am startled to see a ghostly human outline appear on the electronic screen she’s positioned in front of. I realise that I’m looking at an image of Ryan, right down to the phone and papers in his pocket, the shape of his body beneath his clothes. The whole set-up is some kind of scanning device, and I lean forward, fascinated, as the woman taps at some keys.
Also fascinated is the official who propelled Ryan into the machine in the first place. He’s moved back around the front of the machine and is now leaning in to study the image on the screen over the woman’s shoulder.
She points out a couple of places in the image before shrugging and saying, in Japanese, ‘Nothing. No threat. Clean.’ She beckons to Ryan again, indicating he’s done.
Ryan gives the silent official standing beside me a steely, reproachful glare as he moves through the portal. He reaches around the machine to retrieve his pack, and hesitates for a moment before shrugging it back onto his shoulders, as if afraid it will be confiscated. But nobody seems interested in the bag.
I’m watching Ryan walk towards me, when the second official comes up from behind and propels me forcefully into the metal portal. There’s a strange noise as I stand there for an instant, before moving straight through it, outraged at being manhandled without warning.
Ryan turns towards me as the Japanese woman taps a few more keys, then looks at the man standing framed in the portal behind me and says apologetically, ‘The machine must be malfunctioning, sir.’ She turns to the other official, the older man, who’s still standing beside her and indicates her screen. ‘See, nothing here but clouds.’
Time seems to freeze at her words, before recommencing again.
Ryan shouts, almost in slow motion, ‘Mercy! Behind you.’ I turn to see the younger customs officer crumpling silently to the floor. Something vaporous and pale, at least eight feet tall, rises up out of his body, towering over me. It’s vaguely humanoid but it lacks any distinct features, and the energy it gives off now is less human, more monstrous, setting off a sick, gingery feeling in me. It’s swaying a little where it stands, as if testing the air, or getting ready to move.
I can’t identify what it is, but I know that it’s ancient and capable of possession. And it is cunning: it used its human host’s energy to disguise its own strangely part-human energy. This thing is family in some way, but so many times removed that my wariness is in overdrive.
Even before I turn and look at Ryan, I know what I’m going to see: a second creature of vapourrising up out of the motionless body of the other man now slumped at Ryan’s feet.
The female customs official gives a terrified whimper.
I startle everyone and everything in the room by raising my hands and clapping them loudly together in front of my face. Instantly, the two creatures of cloud and malice sway in my direction, their eyeless faces searching me out. As they shamble forward, the outline of each shredding and re-forming continuously, I say calmly and quietly in Japanese, ‘Madam, move away now. Do you hear me? While I have their attention.’
I clap again, and the spirit-creatures let forth a wordless howl that makes me clutch at my head in pain. I realise that what I’m hearing is that horrific, wordless language I’d first heard in Milan: the common language of the daemonium.
The woman is still frozen in her seat, weeping and terrified.
‘Go!’ I growl at her. ‘Move!’
She nods tightly before dropping off her chair to the floor and crawling away rapidly, still whimpering. She leaps to her feet some distance away and runs from the room, taking the other woman with her.
Ryan’s horrified gaze meets mine through the vaporous outline of the creature standing between us.
‘Run, my love,’ I say quietly. ‘Live a long, full life. You’ve endured enough.’
I see him hesitate, then take one step backwards as if he would flee. As he moves, the monster between us turns and lifts one of its vaguely arm-like appendages and pierces Ryan through the shoulder with it. He screams in agony as the thing pulls him close, shrieking into his face in cold fury. Then it wrenches its claw free, throws him over its shoulder and bounds away.
For a moment, I’m so shocked, I can’t move.
The other creature gazes at me through the scanning portal with its eyeless face, as if taunting me, before turning and leaping after the other.
They sweep furniture, machinery, cordons out of their way with their long, shapeless limbs as they cross the immigration zone, back towards the empty, silent lounges that would usually be full of passengers disembarking from planes. I sprint after them, hurdling fallen chairs and plastic trays, rubbish bins and metal signs, my eyes fixed on Ryan, who’s hanging like a rag doll over the shoulder of the demon in front, struggling wildly.
A siren starts to wail somewhere overhead, but I keep running: past cringing maintenance workers, past uniformed men who appear out of nowhere, pulling their weapons, screaming in Japanese that they will shoot. But we leave them all in our wake as we pelt at inhuman speed towards the deserted passenger lounge at the far end of the building. The demons don’t hesitate at the sight of the locked double doors near the silent ticket-processing machine — they just wrench them off their hinges and leap out into empty space. I hear Ryan yelling as the monsters fall through the air soundlessly.
I teeter in the doorway for a moment, looking down. There’s no ramp there, there’s nothing. Just a huge drop to the tarmac.
The creatures land on their feet, look up at me. The one holding Ryan lifts him high off the ground by the back of his leather jacket and gives him a shake. As if to say: If you want him, come and get him.
Shots are fired from behind. I feel one pass right through me, without effect. I don’t look back, I just leap out through the doorway, landing on my feet before the demons of cloud and venom, my eyes on Ryan. He’s shaking from pain and shock, and his lips are tinged with blue.
‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me,’ he hisses. ‘Get away from here. I’m bait, they’re using me as bait.’
‘I know,’ I say softly. ‘They’re not as dumb as they look, these two. They’ve worked out that my weakness is you and always will be.’
As if it understands me perfectly, the empty-handed demon bends and screeches its defiance in my face. The monster that has Ryan in its grip puts its other vaguely claw-like arm straight through Ryan’s other shoulder, his good shoulder, and leaves it there. Ryan gives a howl of mortal agony, twisting in anguish at the end of the creature’s bladelike arm.
I snarl, ‘Let him go! I’ll do what you want, go where you want. You have my word. Just let him go.’
I step forward, and as I do the demon holding Ryan tosses him out of the way as if he weighs nothing, as if he is nothing. Ryan gives a cry and lies still upon the tarmac.
The two creatures move forward, wreathing me in mist, and take hold of me. Cold moves instantly through me, paralysing me like an anaesthetist’s drug. The demons tower over me, drawing me closer, and I seem to see the first blush of morning rising within them, or through them. The stars in the sky seem to go out, one by one, as I feel myself begin to shiver into pieces. They mean to draw me down, down into Hell. I have made my pac
t with them — my life for Ryan’s; a bargain I would make again and again — and there seems no way out.
But there’s a flash of something else, something barely glimpsed. A coming together, a coalescence, a rising. Not the sun, but something that seems even brighter. I bow my head, using the last of my energy to wrench myself sideways as Uriel takes form behind my captors, his giant wings unfurling soundlessly, his broadsword in his hand.
He swings it in one smooth arc and I hear the sizzle of the blade as it connects with the demons’ energy. He cuts them both down and they vanish mid-shriek, the wind bearing the last shreds of their dead energy away.
‘You are a great magnet for trouble,’ Uriel roars over my kneeling figure.
Then he looks up suddenly as he catches rapid movement above and behind me. I turn sluggishly to see men in full riot gear on the ledge above us, weapons drawn. Some stupid order is given, loudly, to fire.
But faster than the men can let loose a volley of shots, Uriel has already knotted one of his great fists into Ryan’s leather jacket, the other into the stuff of me, and leapt off the surface of the world.
By the time the bullets hit the space where we were standing, turning the air blue with lead and smoke, we’ve already left Narita International — all of Tokyo — far behind us.
18
I struggle to pull free of Uriel’s mighty grip. As if proving a point, he lets go of me only when he’s ready to, hoisting Ryan more securely into his arms. Ryan’s still unconscious — head hanging down, limbs slack, backpack still looped over his broad shoulders.
Uriel is silent for a long time as we rise and rise and rise. We’re spearing straight into the sky side by side, so far above the surface of the earth that the air is soon choppy and frigid. The blush of a new dawn seems to be following in our wake, as if we are drawing a veil of light across the world, as if we are its sun.
