The Rephaim: Burn Part 16

I wait until she's a safe distance away before I ask the most demanding question rattling around in my brain.

'Did you do this to us?'

Jude picks up a sachet of sugar, shakes it by one corner. 'No. Sort of.' A frustrated sigh. 'Strange s.h.i.t happened in that forest in Idaho.'

I swallow, taste the memory of dirt and blood. 'I felt that blade in my neck, Jude. How am I alive?' He watches me for a long moment and then tears the sugar open, empties it into his cup.

'Jude-'

'It was an archangel.' He locks eyes with me and for a second I can't breathe. A chair sc.r.a.pes behind me. A bus sounds its horn on the esplanade. Far, far away.

'Which one?' I finally manage.

'I don't know, I couldn't open my eyes. You don't remember any of it?'

'I was drowning in my own blood with my spine almost severed. So, no.'

He crushes the empty sachet. 'Yeah, I saw. Bel had no intention of killing you quickly. He wanted me to watch you lying there, paralysed, knowing he could take your life whenever he wanted.'

I feel the fear again, marrow-deep. What power in the world was strong enough to make me forget that?

'And then what?'

'Leon was swinging at my neck when everything went white. He still got me, but it was sloppy. I remember hitting the ground, thinking the Fallen had turned up after all.' He smiles to himself, bitter.

'Where was Dani?'

'I don't know, but she was with us when we left the forest.'

'Left for where?'

'No idea. It was pitch black and cold and I could barely move, but there was no pain either.'

My skin chills. I remember the icy blackness less than two hours ago when our shift here was interrupted. When someone gave us back our memories.

'I knew you and Dani were there. I felt you, here.' He flattens his palm on his chest. 'Like I do when we shift together. Except no amount of shifting in the world could have healed your neck. I couldn't have saved you, no matter what.' Jude stares down at his cup and I wonder if he's seeing me broken in the dirt, bleeding out in that forest.

'I'm still here.' I say it quietly and he lifts his eyes.

'Only because an archangel saved you-healed you to a point where medicine could take over. And then he left us on the opposite side of the world. Separated.'

I sort through the mess of memories, find that moment I came to in the hospital in Melbourne. Pain radiating through my body with every breath. Grief suffocating me. What did the nurse, Hannah, say? It was a miracle you survived.

'What happened before the hospital?'

Jude reaches for a gla.s.s of water, takes a quick sip. 'Whoever it was, he wasn't happy. I couldn't see him, but his voice hit me like I was standing in front of a stack of speakers. He said he was compelled to separate you, me and Dani so we wouldn't try the ritual again.' Jude says 'compelled' the way Nathaniel would, archaic and authoritarian. Fleetingly, I wonder why an archangel let us live at all given we'd been trying to release the Fallen.

'He said we had to forget we were Rephaim.' Jude picks up his espresso. His gaze cuts away from me. 'That's around the time I started bargaining.'

'For what?'

A self-conscious shrug. 'You. I didn't want to forget your face. The fact that we loved each other.'

He holds my gaze and I don't look away.

'I told him I didn't care what we believed about ourselves as long as we remembered each other. The thought of us not knowing the other one existed, after everything we'd been through...it was too much.' Jude sits his cup back on the saucer. It's then I realise the scars on his knuckles are no longer strangers to me.

'He read me-like Nathaniel reads us-and I gave him everything I could sc.r.a.pe together. All I cared about was creating a history that bound us, that undid the damage we'd done to each other.'

I'm staring at him. I don't know what to say, what to feel. Jude manufactured my memories. My brother turned me into a backpacker. My mouth is dry again. I take a sip of coffee. It doesn't help.

'I used your stories, and anything I thought might help us find each other-and a few memories to keep us safe.'

'Like the Rhythm Palace ma.s.sacre?'

Jude runs his fingers through his hair, still damp. 'I wanted us to be at least half-prepared if a h.e.l.l-beast found us. I could only give you something I remembered, and it couldn't be a memory you were in or it wouldn't have made sense.'

Suspicion slides in. 'It's not because you wanted me to remember Rafa?' Jude knew the truth about what happened between us. Was he trying to undo that damage too?

'I didn't have a lot of time to think it through, Gaby. And I don't have too many memories of fighting h.e.l.lions that don't involve Rafa. That mess at the Rhythm Palace was my single greatest regret-after walking away from you. I had nightmares about it long before we went to Idaho. Maybe that's why it settled in our psyche as a nightmare rather than a memory. Or maybe that was the compromise because I gave us something real.'

I shift my attention from Jude to a shelf above his head crowded with scented candles. Try to sort through a tangle of images and feelings. If it wasn't for that nightmare, I wouldn't have recognised Rafa in the bar last week. I wouldn't have let him get that close to me (or would I?). And I would have died in that cage match with the h.e.l.lion.

Noise continues around us, laughter, a crying baby, cars pa.s.sing by outside, the blender turning mangoes into a smoothie. I smell maple syrup-someone behind me is eating pancakes-and a hint of patchouli candle. Everything so normal. But there's nothing normal about this conversation. About the reality of what Jude is telling me. I'm grappling with each piece of my life, turning it over, trying to make sense of it before the next fragment flutters by.

'What are you thinking?' Jude asks.

I focus on him again. I see the brother I've known for thirteen decades; the brother who walked away from me-but who reached out to me when the chance came for reconciliation. I also see the backpacker who led me up mountains in Peru, who convinced me to bungee jump out of a cable car with him in Switzerland, and who held back my hair when I threw up after too many jelly shots in a London pub. Those last memories may not be real, but they're as much a part of me as the real ones are.

'That dream about the nightclub...it's the thread that started all this unravelling,' I say. 'If I hadn't written that story and put it online, Rafa wouldn't have come to Pan Beach and none of this would've happened. We'd still be apart.'

'And if Rafa didn't come here, Dani wouldn't have seen you in the rainforest. She would never have known you were alive. Never told Jason to come and find you.'

Dani. She was so determined to tell us the truth about our link to Semyaza and then insisted on being with us in the forest. We almost got her killed performing that ritual. And then I put her in danger again, yesterday, letting her project her mind into a room where Rafa and Taya were being tortured. No wonder her mother doesn't trust me.

'The archangel must have changed Dani's memories too,' Jude says. 'And then used her and Maria to cement the lie of our new ident.i.ties.'

We know they visited Jude and me in our respective Melbourne hospitals-in an impossibly short window of time-to make sure we each believed the other was dead. And then had all of it wiped from their memories.

'Presumably, our archangel didn't give Dani the vision of Semyaza and the ritual,' I say. 'So who did?'

'No freaking idea.'

My head hurts. 'Why'd you make me think my name was Gaby?'

'I don't know.' A self-conscious shrug. 'It seemed... softer.'

'And what about all the other stuff: Foo Fighters lyrics, the Dark Thoughts website...both of us wanting to come here to Pan Beach?'

Jude straightens and I think I catch a tiny shadow of hope in his face. 'Mostly it was stuff floating around in my brain. Except for Pan Beach: that was intentional. I thought if we gravitated here, we might find each other. Maybe actually have that life you used to write about.'

'Except you ran off to Tasmania with a hot nurse.'

He dips his head. 'Yeah.'

This is the point I could let him know I understand why he did what he did in Idaho and that we're still all right. But I can't. Not yet. Because he blunted all my sharp edges and he- The full reality of what he's said hits me like a gut punch. Stops me cold.

'What did you give the archangel in return?'

Jude picks up his empty cup, sets it down again. Doesn't answer.

'You said "bargaining". What did you bargain with? This archangel healed us, gave us the memories you asked for-and we both know he left you more prepared for the truth than he did me. He didn't have to do any of it, so what did you give him in return?'

My brother meets my eyes. 'Gaby...' His voice is thicker now, rough.

'What did it cost you?' I push.

'I don't know yet.'

'What did he say he wanted?'

A pause. 'My fealty.'

'What the f.u.c.k does that mean?'

'I have no idea.' He gives me a tight smile. 'But whenever the times comes and he calls in that chip, I'm probably not going to like it.'

BACK INTO THE WOODS.

I'm still absorbing the idea that Jude made a deal with an archangel-a faceless member of the Garrison with more power than I can comprehend-when I see Ez come in from the street. She moves with cat-like grace, tall and lithe. The claw marks that run from her cheek to her collarbone are stark against her caramel skin. More than a few people stare as she pa.s.ses but she's too focused on us to notice. Her eyes skip from Jude to me and back again. We both sit up straight.

'What's up?' Jude asks.

'The Butlers have gone off the reservation.' Ez is still in combat clothes: black pants and black t-shirt, her dark hair in a long plait. 'Simon gave me their address but the place was empty when Zak and I went to check on them.'

I glance at my watch. It's too early for the pub but that doesn't mean they're not there. 'Did you try the Imperial?'

'Yes, delightful hovel that it is. They weren't there either, which probably means they're on their way up the mountain to get their weapons.' She gestures at our empty plates and drained cups. 'You done here?' She doesn't mention we shouldn't be here in the first place. We should be with everyone else, forming a plan to defend the town against Zarael.

Jude and I exchange a quick glance. I nod.

'Let's get everyone together,' Jude says. 'The Butlers' camp is as good a place as any. Two birds, one stone.'

'Is that smart?' Ez says. 'It's the first place Zarael will check when he starts reconnaissance.'

'He's already started,' I say, and tell her about the Immundi on the esplanade.

'We'll be fine on the mountain.' Jude brushes stray sugar crystals from the table. 'We'll keep our eyes open this time.'

'Your call.' Ez's gaze shifts from Jude to me again. She has questions we don't have time to answer. And part of me doesn't want her to know the truth: it will change how she sees me.

'Can you get the word out?' Jude asks Ez. 'We'll grab our weapons and meet you up there.'

A tiny crease appears on Ez's brow. 'Do you need a hand with the shift?'

Jude blinks, hesitates for just a fraction of a second.

'We're good.'

When Ez leaves-still unconvinced of Jude's plan, but not arguing-we go into the alley beside the Green Bean. There's more bite in the sun now, the bricks around us radiating warmth. Jude touches my elbow, tentative.

'We're not done with this conversation.'

'I know.'

'Are we okay for now?'

I'm so far off balance I'm surprised I'm not walking on a lean. But we have twenty-seven Rephaim and an unsuspecting town relying on us to get our s.h.i.t together.

'We have to be,' I say. 'We haven't got time for anything else.'

The camp is deserted.

Mud-splattered utes and four-wheel drives still stand sentry around the site. Cold and silent. The tarp hangs limp from a palm tree like a deflated balloon. The trestle table is on its side, guns and ammunition scattered over the ground, swags kicked to one side. There's a blackened smudge around the fire pit where Joffa collapsed, his jeans in flames. Even the makeshift targets hammered into the banyan tree are askew. The place smells of coal and ash and diesel.

Something's missing...

The bodies.

Where are the guys from Mick's crew who didn't make it?

Jude prowls over to the table, scanning the forest. I follow, pretending not to see the gra.s.s and leaves stained dark at the edge of the camp. The smeared trail disappearing into the trees.

My skin chills. Some of that blood must be Rafa's. I see Bel's blade, shining wet. Rafa, caught totally unprepared. Afraid. For a second I feel the forest pressing in: palm trees blocking the sun; thick roots sprouting down from the banyan tree like bars of a living cage; the high walls of the rock gully hemming us in. There are no signs of life: no parrots, no cicadas. The demons are long gone, but some trace of them must still remain. Or maybe it's what they left behind that's keeping everything else away. I tighten the grip on my katana.

The faint sound of a diesel engine carries up from the valley, revving hard.

'Here they come.' Jude is by the keg. It's sitting in a tub of water now instead of ice. He taps the side with his knuckle. 'Maybe we should encourage them to have a drink first.'

'Yeah, because alcohol always makes those boys more rational.'

He gives me a wry smile. I sling my sword across my back-I remember how to do that now-and help him retie the tarp between the palm trees. Then we lift the table back on its legs, stack the rifles, handguns and ammunition into piles. All the while we watch the forest, waiting.

The engine revs louder, gears grind. We wait near the fire pit in clear sight, eyes on the wheel ruts that mark the only way in and out of the camp by vehicle. A faded yellow four-wheel drive bounces into view, fishtailing in the dirt and spraying leaves and black soil. Mick's mate with the blond mullet is driving, wrestling with the steering wheel as the mud-streaked car bucks and swerves. Mick's in the pa.s.senger seat, already eyeballing us, one hand on the dashboard, the other awkwardly gripping the seatbelt from his shoulder sling.

The car careens into the camp and for a heartbeat I think the mullet's aiming for us. But then he slams on the brakes and skids to a shuddering stop about three metres away. I turn my face to avoid a lungful of diesel.

Mick is first out of the car. His shoulder is still strapped, but the bandage is gone from his throat so I can see the ugly red h.e.l.lion bite interrupting the ink on his neck. Maybe he's not planning on growing his beard back on that side at all. Maybe he thinks it's a badge of honour: he's survived two demon attacks and has the scars to show for it. I'm not so sure he should push his luck for a third.