‘I won’t,’ I grunt, turning back to the monster, ignoring fresh pain in my back as it rears up again, ash falling. For a second I’m in tune with everything. I can hear the snow falling, Angel’s feet pounding over the frozen ground, the murmur of conversation in the school. The moon is a bright ball in the sky, coming towards me, faster and faster as I stretch up, shadows melding all around me, and I look the creature in the eye.
I never wanted to fight. I still don’t know when it will change, when the strength in me will kill the creature instead of sending it back to its world. The thought of becoming a killer is terrifying, it chills me, makes me hesitate. The monster unfurls its wings, heads into the sky. I grab one of its powerful hind legs and hang on, and we are stuck there. I’m too heavy for it to fly, and it’s too strong for me to bring down.
‘Run, Angel,’ I whisper, as the moon winks out.
The house is in darkness. It looms over the hill, the light of the moon a pale, shadowy thing that accentuates its oddness.
I left him there.
I left him fighting a monster, with my foster mother and all those other people just yards away.
I shove the book into my bag and scramble through the hole in the gate. Twisted strands of iron clutch at my clothes, and for a moment I’m almost crying with panic, just at the thought of everything that might be happening at the school.
‘Come on, Angel,’ says my mother’s voice. ‘It’s easy. Just one step at a time, remember?’
‘It’s not easy,’ I whisper through hot tears, finally clearing the mess of the gate and striding up the driveway. The house is quiet before me, the sense of it different somehow, like something broke along with the gate when the creature escaped.
‘You can do this,’ Dad says, deep inside, where he is with me always. ‘You know you can. Bavar knows it too; he’s relying on you . . .’
I creep around the house, avoiding the main steps to the door. I don’t want to face Aoife or Sal. I don’t want to have to explain what I’m doing, or where Bavar is. They don’t seem to have even noticed what’s happening; there’s no movement, no flurry of panic. I skirt to the tower at the side and grab at bunches of ivy and crevices in stone and I climb up, my legs trembling, hands already sore, hoping that somehow I’ll be able to get in at the top.
It is not possible to surprise a house where all things are living.
A little gargoyle I’ve never noticed before starts howling as I climb over the ledge of the balcony.
‘Shh!’ I hiss.
‘Angel-girl, it’s angel-girl,’ it calls in a sing-song voice. ‘She’s here to save the day!’
‘Stop it,’ I say. ‘You’ll wake the whole house.’
‘Tis already awake, my dear,’ it says with an evil little grin. ‘Houses like this don’t sleep while skies are glowing, and small girls fight like warriors!’
Nonsense.
I force the door open and step into the warmth of the house, glad to be away from the gargoyle and the shadows of the outside.
Mind, it’s not a lot better on the inside.
‘Focus, Angel,’ I tell myself, marching over to the bronze plinth and whisking away the cloth.
‘Angel!’ booms Bavar’s grandfather. ‘And you brought the book – well done!’
‘How do I make the spell work?’ I demand. ‘One of them got loose. Bavar is fighting at the school – I need to close the rift.’
‘Bavar is fighting at the school?’ His voice is suitably horrified. ‘He won’t forgive himself if anything happens there – he has never forgiven his parents for what they did. And that was on ME.’ He sighs. ‘I didn’t teach his mother how to manage this place. I thought I’d live forever, that I would always be here to keep the barrier strong. She had no idea how difficult it was just to maintain it. She had no real practice in fighting the raksasa; I’d kept it all AWAY from her. She met Faolan and they got caught up in the glamour of it all, the magic, even the fighting – it became a way of life. They forgot about the barrier that protected the rest of the world. And then it was too late.’ He looks up at me, his eyes startled, as if he’d forgotten I was even there. ‘You paid the price for that, the most terrible price. And now here you are, trying to make up for my mistakes . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘Read the SPELL, Angel. Read it with your whole heart, and give it everything you have. Nobody can ask more than that of any being. I only wish I could do it myself.’
‘You can’t,’ I say, trying not to think too deeply about what he’s just said. There’s no time for it now. ‘If I close the rift while Bavar is still fighting, the raksasa, what will happen to it?’
‘Either Bavar will win, or the monster,’ the bronze says. ‘Without a way back to its own world the raksasa cannot simply disappear. It will be a fight to the death.’ He looks at me, his eyes gleaming. ‘Bavar will win. He has the strength of ten men, and the training to do it. You need not worry about that.’
‘But if he kills it, if he actually kills it, then he won’t be Bavar any more – he’ll be all those things he never wanted to be!’
‘And that will be for the best, if you cannot close the rift,’ he says. ‘Because if you cannot close the rift, he will spend his life fighting them. He will need to harden his heart.’
But that’s his biggest fear. I look at the bronze, and I can see that his grandfather knows it too.
‘I’ll close it,’ I say. ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll close it.’
He winks at me. ‘Good luck, Angel . . .’
I run out of the door, and down the narrow steps, and there’s a warp in the air all around me as I go, as the house comes alive in my wake.
‘We have to do this,’ I whisper, running down the corridor to the old part of the house.
‘WE DO, WE DO,’ echo the ancestors on the wall.
‘You want to kill things,’ I say, my head pounding as I look into the raksasa’s burning eyes. They’re enormous, threaded through with gold veins that seem to lead me inward, so that it’s hard to look away.
‘And you do not? You do not eat meat?’ The creature snorts dark smoke that billows out into the night air and fills my lungs, makes me cough.
‘That’s different . . .’ I say.
‘Tell me why.’
I blink, try to clear my eyes. The monster is not talking to me. It’s the poison from its claws making me hear things, that’s all.
‘Can’t you all just go back?’ I ask, as we circle each other. Its black-red wings are like sails trailing out over the frozen ground, sweeping through the frost.
‘Back?’ It makes a move forward, its tail winding out and snapping down, missing me by inches. I step back slowly, keeping my head up. ‘You opened a gateway to a place we had never known,’ it says in its strange, deep, smoke-filled voice. ‘Where food was plentiful, and the air was cool, and now you say no, it’s not for you, you may not have it.’ It darts at me, its neck stretched as it screams in frustration. ‘What beast would act differently? Would you put a chicken in front of a starving wolf and curse the wolf for eating?’