"Okay, now do you want to tell me what the hell just happened back there?"
Garrick moved his face close to mine and I edged backwards, the wooden shelves of the bookcase biting into my spine.
"Back off, Garrick," warned Harper, gripping his brother by the shoulder and dragging him away from me.
Garrick turned on him, shoving Harper hard in the chest and knocking him back against Benjamin's desk, fragile tomes tumbling to the floor and sending clouds of dust spiralling into the air.
"Not this time, brother," Garrick glowered, his dark eyes blazing. But I could see something else there, a flicker of panic encroaching on his anger. "She almost brought us to our knees out there, just when everything was going so well. She could have destroyed everything we had planned. And if you think I'm going to let her off with a oh well Megan, don't worry, the fear gets us all sometimes, then you are way off the mark."
So I knew then I hadn't been wrong about how the whole meeting had been nothing but a lie. They had intended to lure the Varúlfur there for some twisted power play and Harper had been fully aware all along. I shouldn't have been surprised. What I was surprised about however, was his reaction now as he stood facing his brother, their eyes locked in a furious battle of wills. He looked coiled, ready to attack. I'd seen that look in his eyes before. I'd seen him look at me that way and I knew how deadly it was to provoke the demon.
"And you think ripping her to pieces is going to help?" His voice was a low, dangerous growl. "She's scared, Garrick. Something freaked her out and it sure wasn't them."
Their heads slowly turned in my direction and the way they both scrutinised me made me want to push myself back even further, only there was nowhere for me to go. I was trapped in their lair and I knew there was no way out. Not this time.
Garrick stepped towards me, his movements wary and hesitant almost as if he were afraid to get too close. Inclining his head, his eyes narrowed as he surveyed me, his lips pursed into a tight line.
"My brother is getting way too sentimental in his old age, Megan," he said. "Not so long ago he would have torn the information out of you with his bare hands if he had to."
Harper shook his head but wouldn't meet my beseeching, desperate gaze.
Garrick moved closer still. I held my breath. "You are going to tell us," he warned. "Did you think I had forgotten about poor Gina's last moments? I know that wasn't Lucius' doing. I was there. I saw. You held her hand and everything she saw, everything she said was directed at you. Not Lucius. You. And then tonight, you were fine until something spooked you. I felt your fear. Hell, I could practically taste it. What happened in the cemetery, Megan?"
I remained tight-lipped. The tension in my muscles was crippling me. I wanted to crumble to the floor, curl into a ball and hope that when I unfurled, I'd be back home, so wrapped up in my old life that I could no longer see. I wanted to be her again. Ignorant. Naïve. Blind.
"I am going to ask the question again," sneered Garrick. "And I am going to ask the question again and again until your head feels like it's splitting in two from the pain. And if that doesn't work, then I will make you tell me. I don't care how, but it won't be pleasant, trust me. There is too much at stake here for secrets."
Before I could say anything, I spied two beautiful pools of blue staring at me from behind Garrick as Lucius peered around the vampire, one hand tugging on the hem of Garrick's jacket. Harper stood, tense and alert as if the boy's very presence made him feel threatened.
"Don't be angry with Megan," Lucius said, with that sweet smile. "I will show you."
Garrick's eyes widened and he swallowed hard. I guessed that he too feared the boy's dark touch and I wondered what horrors he had been forced to witness, I wondered what terrible waters he had been forced to wade through and whose cold laughter he heard every time he closed his eyes.
Without flinching at the utter repulsion evident in both their faces, Lucius held out his hands to Garrick and Harper. Everything seemed to stop for a moment, frozen in some lost pocket of time as they contemplated the boy's offer. With one touch, they could find out everything they wanted to know. But they had to cross the line to do it and when that line took them into a realm even they feared, suddenly their desire for knowledge was teetering, wavering and ready to plummet.
Gritting his teeth, it was Garrick who reached out first, steeling himself for what was to come. Harper looked anguished as he plunged his hands into his hair before slowly, reluctantly reaching out one tattooed hand. Lucius, his face as impassively innocent as ever, curled his fingers into their palms and together they fell, these two powerful, dangerous vampires falling to their knees. And I fell with them, finally crumbling to the floor because I knew they were seeing everything that I had seen.
A baby's cry in the unfathomable darkness. A great crushing presence. Pain, immense pain as the wings are ripped from the baby's back. There's no love there, just purpose. Born to endlessly tread a dark path. Born to light the way for others, but never for herself. The child concealed in a new world, granted a new life and for a time, she forgets. But even though she cannot hear them, the agonised cries of the dead never stop. Constantly pleading, screaming. Endless, endless screaming. Only now she has awoken, she remembers, she sees. And they know. They all know.
With a cry, Garrick was the first to wrench his hand from Lucius' grasp and he fell forward, hunched over on all fours, his Mohawk loosened free and falling over his face. He was breathing hard, almost wheezing as if he had run a great distance.
Eyes wide, Harper clutched the edge of the desk with his free hand, bent double and gasping and it was Lucius who released him from the dark bind. When he did, Harper remained where he was as if letting go of the desk would see him plummeting into some great abyss.
I pulled my knees up into my chest and hugged my legs tight, shivering even though I wasn't cold. My back throbbed painfully, the impact of falling down the bookcase or maybe a remnant of what was torn from my skin before I was barely aware of my existence. I wasn't there and then blink, I was. It had really been as simple as that. Some people just are.
"Who are you?" Garrick croaked out a dry, pained whisper.
"She is Michael," Lucius replied for me as he walked over and sat down cross-legged by my side. He put a hand on my knee but did not touch my hand, knowing that was the catalyst. "She is the way."
Garrick shook his head vehemently, glaring wildly at me through his tumbling dark locks. "No. No. It's not possible."
"But you saw. I showed you."
The vampire rose up on his knees and slumped back on his haunches, his chest deflated, his whole body displaying the exhaustion he now felt from the vision. I knew he felt it, because I did too and had done since Lucius had shown me. It was exhausting and unbelievable and yet horribly, horribly true.
"But she just can't be."
"You believe what I am but you won't believe what Megan is?"
Garrick's face twisted with confusion and anger. "But she is a vampire! She is one of us. How the hell can she be what you say she is when she is little more than a demon? We kill. We do not save. That's not our way, Lucius."
"He saved her." Lucius directed his steady gaze over to Harper, who shrank back as if accused of some heinous crime.
"I turned her, it's not the same thing," he said, frowning.
"She would be dead now. You saved her," Lucius asserted. "So yes, vampire or not, she is Michael. She is the way."
Garrick eyeballed me, rubbing his hand across his mouth. "How long have you known?"
"Two nights ago. Lucius showed me two nights ago."
"And yet you chose to say nothing?"
I said nothing in return, but just bit anxiously on the skin around my thumbnail, which was already red and raw from constant nervous gnawing.
"I don't believe this. This is a lie." It was like a cold, sharp slap to the face.
"Said by the master liar himself," I sneered but didn't feel particularly triumphant. "Have you grown so used to lying that you can no longer accept that anyone else is capable of the truth?"
He slammed his fist on the floor. "How am I meant to accept this? Tell me that, Megan! How am I meant to believe that you, little Megan Walden, wife of that twisted son of a bitch Varúlfur, could ever be a descendant of an archangel of all things?"
The words tore out of his mouth and bound me, coiling tighter and tighter around my body until I couldn't breathe. It seemed even more terrifying to hear it spoken out loud. But it seemed I was not the only one terrified, because both Harper and Garrick looked chilled to the core.
Lucius broke the silence. "She is not a descendant. She is Michael," he insisted.
"Lucius, I swear to God if you say that one more time, I will toss you to the Varúlfur myself," Garrick replied with a cold hiss.
"And I will kill you before you lay one hand on him," I spat, uncurling my legs and tensing my hands against the floor, ready to defend the little boy who sat unperturbed by my side.
Garrick stared intently at me for a moment, before falling back onto his elbows, a cold, maddening laugh spurting from his mouth that did nothing to ease the tension. Instead, I inched closer to Lucius.
"You're both crazy, you know that? You're both fucking crazy and you're sending me fucking crazy too. It's a good job we're in an asylum because right now I think we all need some serious help here."
"Do you think that I want to believe any of this?" I shot back. "You think I don't know how insane it all sounds? I feel insane just thinking about it. But I have no choice. I know that it's true."
"Because a child tells you it's true?" he snorted derisively.
"Has he ever lied to you before?"
Garrick's face darkened and he looked away quickly. Too quickly.
"You know what he can do Garrick. You wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to obtain Lucius if you didn't believe what he shows you. He doesn't lie."
He raked his fingers through his hair, holding it back from his face as he stared at the boy. "But this..... you..... It's madness." But I could tell he was beat. The seed was slowing starting to take root inside his head, spreading out its feelers and taking hold.
Slowly, I crept towards him, feeling my muscles scream their protest as I tried to move even though the abject tension still raged through my limbs. As soon as he realised I was moving towards him, Garrick sat up, his face looking more and more tortured the closer I got. I stopped just in front of him; fingertips brushing his leg and making him flinch.
"Garrick," I whispered my plea. "You know it's true. You saw everything. Please, I need you both to believe this, because if you don't help me, how the hell am I meant to hold it together?"
Harper, who had now let go of the desk but sat with his back poker straight against the table leg, was watching me from under his dark lashes and I met his gaze with my own, challenging him to speak up. When he did, he did not respond in the way I had expected.
"How can you be Michael himself?" It wasn't an expression of disbelief; it was a question, pure and simple.
"I don't understand it myself. All I know is that it's like an infusion of his spirit or his life force I guess. I'm not his descendant because that would have meant Michael would have had to procreate and that was forbidden, the punishment to be cast out, just as many others had."
"But why? Why would an archangel place his life force within a child?"
"Harper, you saw as much as I did. I don't know all the answers."
"But all this business about you being the way, what does that even mean? Garrick, you're the supposed scholar here, you must have an idea?" He turned to his brother.
The other vampire just sighed, defeated. "Well, Michael was the angel of death, tasked with offering lost souls the chance to redeem themselves and then accompanying those chosen ones to Heaven. It is believed that Michael was the only way that the dead could ascend; only through him could they escape purgatory. If Megan is some kind of living incarnation of Michael, then it means she has the power to lead the dead out of the darkness."
His words only seemed to compound the fear more, nailing it through my bones like some kind of verbal crucifixion.
"The voices," Harper gasped. "The ones you hear in these walls, that's why they speak to you? It's not because they want to be avenged for the Great Cleansing. They want out. They want you to lead them out."
"Yes. I guess. I don't know." I tasted blood and glanced down at the broken skin on my thumb. "I thought they were just restless. That somehow they needed closure before they could move on, but we avenged them at Gravestock and they didn't go away. In fact, they get louder, every day."
"Wait, hold on a minute. You've always been this way, have I got that right? That's what you showed us, Lucius?" He looked questioningly at the boy, who nodded his head, seemingly pleased that Harper had understood. "But you never heard the voices before? What changed?" he said to me.
Surprisingly, it was Garrick who spoke but his eyes were still wary. "She did. She changed. You changed her," he raised an eyebrow at his brother. "You were the catalyst. By turning her, you awoke whatever had lain dormant inside her since she was concealed here."
Harper exhaled deeply. "But you didn't hear the voices straight away?"
"No," I admitted. "But it's pretty hard to hear anything when all you can think about is feeding and whether or not you can break your maker's neck because you despise him so much." I smiled wryly, maybe the first smile I had mustered in days.
"The darkness is like fog," Lucius said, shuffling over to where we sat, forming a tight circle. "Like the really thick fog that you get over the sea. The light from the lighthouse can't break through it all so any boats lost in the fog will take longer to head towards the light."
"So you're saying that any persecuted souls wandering in purgatory wouldn't have seen Megan straight away after she had been turned?" Harper said. "But now they're closer and that's why Megan can hear them, they're trying to find her in the darkness?"
"Uh-huh," nodded Lucius. "And because there are so many."
"How many are we talking?"
"Well I would count it out on our fingers, but we'd need a lot more pairs of hands." The boy rolled his eyes.
"They know," I whispered. "They all know. And what's more, that Mr Drachmann, he knows it too. He knew it as soon as he looked at me, I mean really looked. And when he walked away, he called out to him, to Michael. But he was talking to me. I heard him." I tapped on my skull to indicate how I had heard him.
Garrick's face twisted, clearly troubled deeply at the mention of the strange human. "Mr Drachmann?"
"Yes," I said, my eyes narrowing.
"You're sure about this?"
"Of course I'm sure," I hissed.
He was quiet for a moment, massaging his temples with his fingertips as if warding off a headache.
"What, Garrick?"
"This changes everything."
"What? Why?" said Harper.
"Because if this crazy notion is true, then the fact they know about Megan is very, very bad news indeed. They want Lucius, that much we know. And knowing what we do about Lucius, we know exactly why they want him. And if this Drachmann guy knows what Megan is, then they are going to stop at nothing to get Lucius and Megan."
Harper's heckles rose instinctively. "Why Megan too?"
Garrick quickly rose to his feet and walked over to one of Benjamin's bookcases, running his fingers over the old spines until he found the one he was looking for. Returning to the circle, he knelt and flicking through the crisp delicate pages, he placed the open book in the front of us.
I looked closely at the picture of the painting and noted the figure of Michael, wings outstretched and sword in hand, trampling on Satan who was depicted as some kind of winged serpent beast with the torso of a man.
"The painting is Archangel Michael by Italian baroque artist Guido Reni," Garrick said. "There's a mosaic of the same image in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and it shows Michael in his other role, maybe his first and most important role."
"Which was what?" I asked, mesmerised by the blonde flowing curls of the archangel.
"When Satan and the other angels revolted against God, it was Michael who crushed their rebellion and cast them out. With a much depleted army, Satan took about corrupting the world of man and gathering their souls about him, his power increasing with each one that was imprisoned within purgatory. And so now, his army is greater than it ever was before and it is only the binds of the Underworld that keep his forces at bay. Only The Lost have the power to release them. And if that was to happen, there is only one thing on this earth that could stop our world being overrun by the Devil's army."
"An archangel," Harper whispered.
"Oh not just any archangel, my brother," Garrick replied. "Only one has that power." He tapped a finger on the page and looked pointedly at me, his eyes locking with mine and sending great pulses of fear coursing through my veins.
"Michael, the great warrior, the great protector. Michael, leader of the Army of God."