Chapter Text
Heat. Infernal, incessant heat, swirling frantic and greedy up her limbs, her chest, her face. Drying up her eyes. Scalding her tongue, red raw, white hot, abyssal black pain.
The Halo. Ava screamed, screamed as the Halo seemed to spin and grind in her back, burning hotter than all the rest, too hot, so hot it seemed like it would burn her to ashes, burn its way out of her to join the war, and leave her in this in-between.
But her skin didn’t tear and the flesh didn’t split; the Halo’s juddering slowed and the heat became a dull, sour sore. It pulsed between her shoulder blades and echoed up to the space between her ears.
Ava opened her eyes. The ground beneath her whipped past, reddish, dirty, too fast for her to discern the details. The sky was the same colour, that endless red, the red of blood and dry earth. She could feel the grains surging through Reya’s hourglass, seconds and minutes and hours swirling into an incomprehensible maelstrom. She was one of them, among millions, or billions. She could feel the vast, awesome waves of time thundering past at Her divine command. It would spit Ava out right at the time that Reya wanted her. To fight Her war.
And then she remembered. She wasn’t Her weapon, wasn’t a thing, to be tossed out when and where and how the Goddess desired. She could change this. She had to change this.
Ava closed her eyes again, and in the fuzzy, reddish darkness she remembered. She remembered the medieval streets of Malaga, lively in the late spring evening. She remembered the flashing lights and heady air of a party she was never invited to, but that she danced at anyway. The feeling of warm sand between her toes. Savoury tortilla, and sunrise with a friend. A friend . She remembered Mary, then remembered that thinking of Mary could anchor her here, and let her go. She remembered Camila’s warm laughter and warmer embrace. Mother Superion’s arch gaze and dry humour. Hans, the bar, the regulars.
Beatrice. Beatrice. Beatrice.
Her face, her smile, her frown. Her laugh, her tears, her hands, her lips. Her. Her. Her. Her eyes, on Ava, watching, not flinching away, as the portal separated them.
Ava thought of Beatrice with everything she had left in her, even as her ceaseless motion seemed to wave and bend and stutter, even as the scorching heat slowly gave way. The rattling pain of Reya’s dominion in her head faded and was replaced by a roar of whipping air. She moved her leg. She moved her leg.
Ava opened her eyes.
It was daytime.
It was daytime, and she was out of Reya’s realm, and she was falling, the ground far below racing up to meet her.
“Shit! Fuck! Shit!”
It sure was racing, and Ava figured that she had maybe two seconds before she was going to be very well acquainted with said ground. She clenched everything , reaching instinctively for the Halo; it flared warm into life, arresting her momentum, but it wasn’t quite quick enough and only slowed her a fraction before Ava slammed nose-first into the dry, gritty earth.
It hurt.
“Fucking… ouch.” Ava lay there prone for a second, sucking in air that the impact had knocked clean out of her, trying to clench her fingers and will her limbs back to their proper alignment and orientation. It took several moments, along with a long, agonising series of cracks and clicks from her broken bones, but the Halo whirred smoothly into action and knitted them back together. Ava focussed on it, felt how its boundless reserves had been made exponentially larger, practically limitless, during her time with Reya, and let herself bask in its warm embrace for a moment.
“If no one else has got me, at least you’ve got me,” she muttered, spitting out clumps of bitter dirt from where they caked her lips and nose, clinging to her spit and blood. She rocked up to a seated position, and the blood rushed out of her head, making her woozy for a second.
Thanks for choosing to fly with Reya Airlines, Ava thought, an edge of hysteria creeping in, meal service lacking and broken bones guaranteed. Hopefully she wouldn’t ever be doing that again. The sickly vertigo receded; Ava rubbed grubby hands across her face and cast a glance at her surroundings.
Well, she definitely wasn’t in Adriel’s church any more. There was no smooth concrete enveloping her, no portal at her back. Ava was sat on her ass in the middle of some kind of … forest? Orchard? The trees around her were gnarled, their green foliage like little puffy clouds, and they were spread out evenly as far as she could see; there was no undergrowth between them. An orchard, then, or something cultivated. Ava spared a moment to be grateful she hadn’t gotten stuck in one of the trees. That would have been humiliating and likely even more painful.
She looked around again, trying to find a sign, a map, some kind of indicator of where she might be, when she might be, but there was nothing. She could have fallen through a layer of clouds, ten thousand miles, and a thousand years in either direction and she’d be none the wiser. Ava suppressed a shudder.
She stumbled to her feet, aware of the dull ache of her healed wounds, a deep, bone-numbing tiredness, and the merciless beat of the sun on her back, made worse by her ragged combat gear. At least it seemed like she’d avoided the North Pole. Ava tugged her zipper down another inch over her sternum, and patted down her pockets. Nothing. No phone, no weapon, no money. She looked up hopelessly at the sky, recalling Beatrice’s patient lessons on survival and orienteering in the wilderness, but unfortunately all she could see was a blue sky and a yellow sun and about eight billion identical trees.
“Got any ideas?” she mumbled aloud, half expecting to hear a familiar tone offering a soothing response — or a snarky retort — directly into her brain, just like it had on the other side. But she’d left her friend behind, and there was no reply other than the distant chittering of birds, the rustle of leaves. Ava took one more look around, threw up her hands and said “fuck it.” Then, she started walking.
She couldn’t say how long she’d been walking for — she hadn’t existed within time for, well, a long time. The trees just kept coming, regular and repetitive and meaningless, and Ava felt herself start to sweat through the tattered jacket and jodhpurs that she’d left Madrid in. The sun continued to beat down, and, eager to get it off her back, Ava turned at a right angle. Her whim was rewarded; she saw, stretching from right to left so that it ran parallel to her original route, the suggestion of a gravel path. Ava tramped over to it, feeling the thud of her boots sharpen and crunch under the firmer surface, and she let out a little whoop of triumph. It ripped its way out of her throat, and Ava was abruptly, intensely aware of her thirst, which felt like sandpaper coating her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk anything, or eaten anything. A wave of nausea rippled through her at the thought, and Ava stopped her trudging along the path to spit out bitter, acidic bile. Her stomach was empty. She’d kill for a glass of water and a side of fries.
She stopped like that, hands on her knees under the laconic heat of the sun, for uncountable minutes. It could have been an hour. Ava, desperately, wished she knew when and where the hell she was. If her desire, her longing, the force of her will had been enough to stop the careless passing of years, had been able to return her to when she’d left. Clearly, they'd missed the memo on the where . But that was less important.
The shout from somewhere ahead startled her. Ava straightened, immediately falling into combat readiness, looking for its source.
An older man, thin and wiry and stooped, olive skinned with a fluffy white moustache, was approaching. His head was covered in a style Ava vaguely recognised from a documentary on the Holy Land that Sister Frances had been fond of subjecting her to at least once a month. He moved slowly and cautiously, leaning on a wooden cane at his side, like he was weighing up every single step along the stony path. His clothes were long and loose and flowing, but she thought she could spy the hint of a sneaker under the hem close to the ground.
He didn’t look like much of a threat. But then, neither did she. Don’t fight unless you have a complete understanding of your odds. Ava waited.
The man stopped a few feet away from her, eyes dark and keen, deep-set and surrounded by tanned, wrinkled skin. He spoke, and Ava did not understand. She blinked. His eyebrow quirked, and he spoke again. Still nothing. She couldn’t even pick out a word.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Español?” The man grunted, and she tried Portuguese, German, and English with no luck. The man studied her a moment longer, inscrutable; she raised her open hands, palms first, hoping he got that message, at least. Then, he turned his back, and walked back the way he’d come. Ava stared for a moment, until he paused and cocked his head over his shoulder in an apparent invitation.
She hesitated in an agony of indecision, just for a moment, until her stomach rumbled rudely, loud and unexpected in the quiet of the grove. She could stand here hoping for someone else to rescue her, she guessed. Or lie down and die of exposure, which would really piss Reya off. “Fuck it,” she said, for the fourth time that afternoon, and followed him.
Eventually, the trees gave way. In front of them was a modest, low house. A couple of dusty cars and a tractor were parked on the gravel driveway, and Ava felt a swell of relief that they didn’t look too different to the cars she’d seen parked by the side of the road back in Madrid. No sci-fi space ports or medieval stables, at least. There was other farming equipment scattered around the grounds, ladders and crates and shears, and a couple of men squatting near an outbuilding, smoking cigarettes and murmuring together. They were in jeans and checked, collared shirts, and glanced curiously at Ava and her escort as they neared. The old man yelled something to them; one of them got up and went ahead, into the house.
“You,” said the old man abruptly in accented English, and Ava started. “Stop. Here.” He gestured, hand up, and she stayed where she was, before he, too, went into the house. The second man had straightened up and was still watching her, something wary in his stance.
Ava tried not to fidget. A grey cat sloped out from between the cars, and sauntered up to her. She cast another glance at the man watching her, and then she squatted down, and offered it her hand. It sniffed, and butted her fingers. She stroked its head carefully, feeling the softness of its fur, trying to keep herself calm.
Distantly, birds called. Ava heard the rumble of an engine, some way away, swelling up and fading again as the vehicle passed the property. Then, it was quiet again.
When footsteps crunched over the gravel, she raised her head. Three people approached — her rescuer, the younger man from the outbuilding, and a woman in a pale, flowing dress and a light blue hijab. Ava stood hastily; the cat let out a disappointed meow and slunk off around their ankles, towards the house.
“Are you lost?” The woman said in English. Her accent was strong, but not thick, and Ava let out a breath of relief.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “Erm. Sort of. Where … where am I, exactly?”
The woman blinked. She was older than Ava, though likely not by much. “ Al-Jalīl. Ah… I think you call it Galilee.”
Galilee. The Galilee. The Galilee with the sea where Jesus built his ministry, turned water into wine, walked on water, and reappeared to his disciples for the final time after his resurrection. The Galilee which was absolutely the main setting of every nun’s favourite read the Bible, and, notably, was nowhere near Madrid.
Ava stared at her. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” It kind of made sense, though, given what Reya had taught her. The veil was thin, here.
There was a pregnant pause. “And, erm.” Ava looked at her hands. They were grubby from the ground, but no longer covered in her and Michael’s blood. Her combat suit was filthy and ripped, but the skin beneath had healed. “When am I?”
“I don’t understand,” the woman said slowly, looking increasingly concerned.
“The date! What’s the date today?” Ava replied, aware of how utterly insane she sounded, and not caring.
“It’s —” the woman pulled a phone from her pocket; it looked just like the phones Ava was used to, and she held her breath, hoping, hoping with all her heart that it was not too late — “it’s October 16th.”
“What — what year?” Ava’s voice cracked.
Her audience stared at her. “2020,” the woman said eventually. “Today is October 16th, 2020. It’s about twenty past five in the afternoon, if you must know.”
Three days. She’d only lost three days.
The relief was almost overwhelming, and Ava sank to her knees.
She’d been over there — months, years, decades. It was hard to know. Maybe impossible to estimate. But here on Earth, only three days had passed since the siege of Adriel’s church. Three days since she’d fallen through the portal. She could get out of here, find her way back to Spain, to the Cradle, or Jillian’s. Or to Switzerland. Find the others — find Beatrice. She could do that. She had to.
Hot tears spilled over her cheeks, and she sniffled and clenched her eyes shut, trying to contain them. She started at a touch on her shoulder. The woman stood over her, face softer now, concerned. “Why don’t you come inside? We can make tea, eat something.”
Ava nodded, and let the woman help her to her feet. “Thank you,” she managed.
In the cool twilight of the house, Ava was steered into a wooden seat at a low table. Her hosts bustled from pantry to sideboard, placing a plate of warm, unleavened bread, hummus and fruits in front of her. A steaming glass of herbal tea was added, and she dug in. She wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted anything quite so good. Her empty plate was whisked away and refilled, and only when Ava was tearing off the juicy flesh of the last watermelon slice from its rind did she pause to take a breath.
Her hosts were looking at her, gazes veering between concerned and impressed. Ava wiped her sticky fingers on her trousers and gulped some cooling tea. “I — thanks,” she said again, looking between them all.
The younger man refilled her glass in silence. The woman smiled slightly. “My name is Nour Zaid. This is my husband, Ahmed,” she gestured at the man in jeans wielding the teapot, “and my father, Mohamed el Taweel. My mother lives here too, though she’s resting. I’m the only one who speaks English, I’m sorry. But you’re on our farm.”
Ava nodded, inclining her head awkwardly to them as they were introduced. Nour tilted her head and looked at her curiously. “So who are you? Why are you here?”
“It’s…” she ran a hand through her hair, “it’s kind of a long story.” Nour murmured something to the men, who looked at her sharply. “My name’s Ava. Erm. I was in Spain. And then I … woke up here?”
“You… woke up here.”
Ava steeled herself, and nodded. Nour’s gaze sharpened, reminding her unexpectedly of Mother Superion. Ava wondered how they’d react if she told them the truth. No, I actually got sucked into an interdimensional portal by a God who trained me into a supersoldier and tried to send me forwards in time until I thought hard enough about my friends to fall out of the sky above your farm. Hmm. It did make her sound a little unhinged. Even considering what she’d been up to for the last half year or so before that on Earth. Her hosts talked among themselves for a moment, something agitated in Nour’s husband’s movements.
Nour nodded at whatever he said. “We can drive you to the police station in Afula.” She said to Ava. “If you’re lost, they can help you.”
“No,” she said quickly, mind racing. Police meant questions, and investigations, and incarceration. She’d probably end up stuck in some compound for months on end at gunpoint while they decided what to do with her. She wasn’t going into another institution if she could help it. “No police. I don’t… get on with police.”
Nour raised an eyebrow, translating this, or commenting on it, to her relatives. Her husband Ahmed looked at her, and for the first time, a slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “So what do you need, Ava? How can we help you?”
She didn’t have an answer to that. “I… I need to get — home. Back to Europe. But…” Ava shrugged, a wry, helpless smile making its way across her face, “I don’t know how. I don’t have money, or anything.”
Nour pulled out her phone. “Can you call someone?”
Ava stared at it. The screen lit up, its background showing a hazy sunset. “I can try.”
She only knew one number by heart. It had been Beatrice’s, in Switzerland. Beatrice had made her memorise it in case of an emergency. Recalling the string of numbers was difficult, the memory distant and faded. But once Ava typed in the country code and the first couple of digits, the rhythm of the string came back, like Beatrice was murmuring it in her ear, and she tapped it out in full.
Ava pressed dial, and Nour put the phone on speaker. There was a long moment of silence — the discordant tone of an international connection — then, a woman’s voice, and Ava almost leapt out of her seat. “The number you called has been disconnected.” The voice said smoothly, first in German, then, presumably, in French. Ava hung up the call, feeling a bit like she’d been kicked in the gut. The whooshing breathlessness, the immediate pain. The blinking back of helpless tears.
“Disconnected,” she said dully, and Nour nodded and pocketed the phone. She stared at her empty plate, the reality sinking in. She was stuck — in the middle of nowhere, far from the others, with no way of getting back to them. All that painful, grinding effort to make it back, and she may as well have still been in Reya’s realm. What was she going to do?
Beatrice would know. She clenched her fist around her fork, ignoring the low drone of voices around her, aware of her exhaustion and her hopelessness. Maybe she could sleep it off. Maybe, if she slept, she’d wake up again in Jillian’s villa, or in their little alpine flat, the sheets still warm next to her.
“Ava,” Nour said, making her start. “Can you work?”
“Work?” Ava put down her fork. “Doing what?”
“My father can always use help on the farm,” the woman said lightly, nodding at him. He was scrutinising her, his lined face unreadable. “You look healthy. You know, strong. If you help him out for a few days, or weeks, we can host you here. Food, a bedroom. Maybe some money, too.”
Ava bit her lip, thinking about it. It didn’t take long. She wasn’t sure she had much of a choice; it was this or walking out over the horizon and hoping for the best. She nodded. “I can do that. I can’t drive, though. Or speak your language.”
Nour nodded, and smiled warmly. The skin around her eyes crinkled appealingly. “Well, it’s lucky for you that I am a teacher by trade. I can help you learn. We can start tomorrow, though. First, let’s get you some clothes,” her eyes roamed dubiously over Ava’s ripped, filthy battle gear, “and you can settle in. You look exhausted, dear.”
As if Nour had summoned it to life, the tiredness stirred and settled heavily into Ava’s limbs. She nodded, eyes aching from the effort of staying open, and allowed herself to be steered out of the kitchen. Nour’s hands were a guiding weight on her shoulders.
Most of the work on the El Taweel farm took place in the morning, shortly after the call to prayer which echoed through the pre-dawn chill and, without fail, would wake Ava from a thick and dreamless sleep. Nour’s mother Aisha, a short, solid woman with an unflappable air and a deep, rich voice, would serve up tea and a plate of bread, hummus, soft salty cheese and sliced cucumbers, chatting all the while in the language Ava still couldn’t understand, and she’d eat while the family prayed. Then, she’d meet them outside, and Nour would go to teach elementary students at the village’s Arab school, while Ava would join the men in managing the endless tasks involved in running the farm.
They hadn’t quite known what to make of her the first couple of days. They’d communicate in gestures and exaggerated motions, Ava mimicking their actions until Mohamed, or Ahmed, or Ahmed’s brother Youssef, would nod and smile. They soon realised that Ava may be small, but she was quick, strong and agile, and soon she found herself inundated with tasks from dawn to well after midday. She’d help with the harvest, which was still ongoing to catch the ripest, sweetest olives before the onset of winter, or she’d be helping to fix tools, fencing and equipment, her smaller hands useful for the more fiddly tasks. Even after that, she’d find herself pitting olives, brining and curing them, or helping with their pressing to make smooth golden oil which would be bottled and sold.
After lunch, she’d often be excused to rest. When Nour got home, they’d sit on the cushions of the common area while the older woman patiently guided her through phrases in Hebrew and Arabic. She’d tell her about the region, the other families in the area. The places which were safe to go and those which were better avoided. What to do if she heard gunshots, or a droning alarm from the nearby settlements.
And daily, Ava checked the news on the others’ phones. Spanish police were continuing to investigate the “siege of Madrid”. There was a warrant out for Adriel’s arrest, though no sign of him, as expected, since Ava knew that he’d actually been torn to pieces by interdimensional demons in the cellar of his church. Casualties continued to be identified, though none of the dead, based on the scant information to emerge, appeared to have been secret tactical nuns. Ava didn’t know if the reports’ vagueness made her feel better, or worse.
And the days trickled by, one after the other with no change, and every night, Ava drifted to sleep while making plans to get back to Spain. She’d hitchhike through Syria and Turkey. Maybe she’d stow away on a flight and be there by dinnertime. Or she could take a boat, watch the waves crash against distant cliffs, journey the length and breadth of the Mediterranean coastline. In every version of Ava’s plan-turned-dream, Beatrice would be there to welcome her home, whether it was at the solid ramparts of Cat’s Cradle, or the modest hallway of their Swiss apartment, or the manicured courtyard of Jillian’s villa. Beatrice would smile, that small, secret smile that Ava had been graced with more and more in their last weeks together. She’d reach for her, and Ava would fall into her embrace, and — and — and —
Sometimes, though, she’d only remember the pain on Beatrice’s face, illuminated in an unearthly blue from the portal. Michael’s broken body, Lilith’s pitiless gaze. And Ava would cry herself into a heavy, uneasy sleep. She didn’t dream.
Her eighth day at the farm, when it arrived, was turning out like all of the previous seven. Ava, dispatched to the western edge of the olive farm, climbed to the top of her stepladder, rake clutched in her hand. She ran the rake through the branches in front of her, watching the little olives, black and purple like bruises, fall out from the tree and thrum satisfyingly against the tarp below. But, before she could move to the section above and repeat the motion, something crackled from nearby; Ava vaguely caught a sharp scent of humming ozone, making her nose twitch and her hackles rise.
“That took you less time than I thought.”
Ava almost fell off her ladder. Before she’d even thought about it, the Halo awakened in her back and she leapt to the ground, spinning to confront the owner of that familiar voice: Lilith, tall and slender, leaning back against the twisting trunk of the next tree over and studying her keenly.
Ava didn’t know what she expected — Lilith to fly at her with her freaky demon claws out? A swirl of wraith demons to rise up out of the space where she’d once seen the woman’s wings unfurl? She stood there, tensed, hands up in a guard and Halo primed to launch an explosive blast, but Lilith didn’t move. She didn’t so much as twitch. She just watched her, arms crossed, head slightly tilted.
Ava let out a breath, and dropped her arms. “What the fuck do you want, Lilith?”
Finally, Lilith moved, pushing herself off the tree, and Ava’s guard flew back up again, but she only let out a humourless laugh, raising her hands in an apparent effort to calm her. “Can’t a girl visit old friends now and again?”
“Old friends? You’ve tried to kill me, like, eight times, you psycho,” Ava retorted, casting a quick glance around for any witnesses. Nothing. The others had left her to cover this patch of the crop alone.
She couldn’t let Lilith get close — try and grab her, abduct her, kill her. Again. She was so, so over the ex-sister warrior’s whole deal.
“I also saved your life,” Lilith pointed out archly. “Twice, I may add.”
“Yeah, still trying to figure that one out,” Ava muttered, giving up on her guard. She’d just Halo the shit out of Lilith if she tried anything, she told herself. “Did you want to save the pleasure of bumping me off for yourself?”
Lilith shrugged, and didn’t reply. She looked like she was trying to work something out; her eyes were narrowed knowingly, and roving her intensely. Ava decided she didn’t like it. “Do I have something on my face?”
“How’d you do it?” Lilith said, as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Do what?”
“Get out.” Lilith did approach her now, but she breezed right past Ava and sat herself on the stepladder’s second rung, long legs extended before her. “Reya would have wanted to keep you until you were needed. Which isn’t right now, as far as I know. Then again, maybe you know more than me, now. She was never really keen on me. She can get in line, am I right?” Lilith leaned back on her elbows, face tilted towards the sun, making the otherworldly scales over her brow and cheeks glimmer like stardust.
“Oh. I get it.” Ava folded her arms, pushing her oversized, third-hand flannel up past her elbows. “You want the gossip. The 411.”
“Are you quoting Mean Girls at me?”
“Lilith Villaumbrosia, I didn’t know you were a fan,” Ava smirked, and Lilith, finally, flared her nostrils in irritation.
Satisfied that she wasn’t going to get disembowelled, for now, Ava threw herself down on the grass. The pair sat there for a moment in an awkward, expectant silence. Somewhere in the distance, Ahmed shouted something. It wasn’t for her, and Ava swallowed a mixture of relief and disappointment.
Lilith shrugged. “Well, good talk. If there’s nothing else you want to try and wisecrack about, I guess I’ll leave you to your little… harvest.”
“No — wait,” Ava said urgently, before she could stop herself. Lilith smirked, triumphant, and it was Ava’s turn to bite down her irritation. She let out a huff of air. “Fine. Reya wanted to send me forwards in time. Years, I guess. But it’s all in the intention. I — thought about who I am. My life. My friends. And I landed here, instead.”
Lilith nodded. “Worked that all out by yourself, did you?”
“Yes.” Ava lied. Lilith looked at her sceptically. “Why does everyone think I’m stupid?” Ava said defensively. “I can come up with plans too, you know.”
Lilith ignored that. “And the war? What did she tell you about it?”
“Why do you care, Lilith?” Ava asked wearily. “You were doing a pretty good job of being Adriel’s bitch back there until you had another wobble at the last minute. Were you using him for ideas? Do you want to replace him?”
“No,” Lilith snapped, eyes flashing dark, and Ava held back a smirk. “I don’t want to replace him. I don’t want anything like him to happen again. I —” she shook her head. “I’m trying to help.”
“Why?” she didn’t reply, and Ava rolled her eyes. “If you want me to tell you anything, you have to tell me why you want to help. Why now, after everything. You killed Michael — Jillian’s son. You helped Adriel kill Duretti. You tried, need I remind you, to kill me.”
“Yes, we covered that,” Lilith muttered. It took her a few seconds to speak again. “After I came back — you know, the first time I saved your life — I didn’t understand what was happening to me. No one could tell me. Salvius just wanted me for her own ends. The Church thought I was some kind of abomination. My own mother —” she shook her head, a bitter, haunted expression crossing her face. “Adriel knew exactly what I was. And he showed me what I could do. He didn’t treat me like some kind of monster.
“Anyway,” she said, caustically, “that was all well and good until the damned bloodbath in Madrid. I didn’t want to kill innocent people, Ava. I didn't want the entire world to be possessed by amoral demons. That might surprise you.”
“I don’t know what the hell you want,” Ava said. “I don’t think you know what you want.”
“Well, maybe I know now what I don’t want,” Lilith said softly. “Whatever I am, it’s not what Adriel tried to make of me.”
They were both silent. Ava was transported to a similar, tentative moment of peace between them, back outside the Arq-Tech labs in Malaga, a half a world away and a lifetime ago.
Before Michael’s body had been blown apart.
“So, you don’t want to be a bad guy anymore,” Ava said flatly. “What are you doing, then? What’s your plan?”
“Hard to plan without knowing what’s going on,” Lilith tried, but Ava shook her head.
“Don’t bother. Tell me what you’re up to, Lilith.”
“You have gotten bossy,” Lilith said bitingly. “I’m cleaning up. There's still idiots out there who believed in Adriel, and aren’t moving on. They think he’s in hiding, or something. Running around like paramilitaries harassing people, trying to set up his attenuators. They’re a nuisance, but they’re still dangerous, so long as they’re trying to harvest the power of prayer. Since the OCS is a wreck, I’m dealing with that.”
That made sense, Ava conceded. Grudgingly. “And the war? You know about it.”
“Only what Adriel told me. His plan to break his brothers and sisters out of Reya’s chains. I’ve been keeping an ear to the ground.” Lilith said. She saw Ava’s imminent question, and forestalled it. “And in your case, I can feel the Halo. Remember, I’m half-Tarask now. And your signal is a hell of a lot stronger than it was before you left. I felt you pop out of the sky last week, and I’ve just been tracking you here since. You haven’t been using it much.”
“No need,” she shrugged. “So now you’re like… my sniffer hound.”
Lilith rolled her eyes.
“And the Order?” Ava continued, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice. “Are they … alright? Camila? Beatrice?”
Lilith shook her head. “You first. Tell me what you know. Then I’ll tell you about them.”
“You’re such a fucking bitch, Lilith.”
“I know.”
Ava sighed, and told her. “Reya told me that Adriel was trying to generate enough power to break down the barrier that She set up, between us and his people. Like, busting them out of cosmic jail. And he managed to do enough to get them started. Like jump-starting a car. And they’ll get there on their own, soon enough. Eight years, or something, she said. The barrier will dissipate and so will… Reya, I guess. Sucks to be Her.”
Lilith nodded. “I thought so. What’s the plan to stop them?”
“What, so you can go snitch on us?”
“Grow up.” Ava glowered at her, and Lilith’s expression, improbably, became vaguely pleading. “Ava. Please. I want to help. I don’t want the world overrun by wraith demons. I’ve seen that.”
She wasn’t quite sure what urge grabbed her, but there was something rather addictive about making Lilith beg. And so, rather than taking pity on her former sister slash mortal enemy slash dark mirror and sharing her knowledge, what came out of Ava’s mouth was: “Say sorry.”
“Say —” Lilith jerked to her feet, all pleading gone, now looking incandescent, and Ava held back a delighted giggle. “Are you actually eight years old?”
“Say sorry,” Ava regained her composure and repeated herself firmly, looking up at Lilith’s tall frame from her spot on the grass. “Say sorry for killing Michael. And for trying to stab me. Like, ten times.”
“You said eight before,” Lilith retorted. Ava just looked at her, waiting for her apology. She wished she had a phone to record it. For posterity.
Finally, Lilith threw herself back down on her perch. With a grimace of distaste, she stared at a spot somewhere over Ava’s shoulder. “Fine. I’m sorry, Ava,” she began flatly, “that I killed your darling boy Michael. And tried to kill you too. Words cannot express my regret and my contrition. I can only hope you find it in your heart one day to forgive me.”
Ava raised a single eyebrow, not bothering to hide her grin. “You’re so gracious. And anyway, I said you tried to kill me eight times. And failed, every time. You definitely tried to stab me more times than that. But I’m sure you’re very sorry for every single time.”
“Utterly beside myself,” Lilith said drily. Ava tossed an olive at her, and she caught it and rolled it between her fingers. Ava swallowed her disappointment. She’d been hoping Lilith would try to eat it. They were absolutely vile before they’d been processed; she’d found that out the hard way. “Can we get on with this now?”
For a long second, Ava thought about lying. Lilith had not exactly proven herself to be a reliable ally over the last six months. But — she still remembered that woman in the catacombs beneath the Vatican. Remembered her fighting for Mary. Remembered her, vaguely and through waves of old, dreadful pain, helping Beatrice to save her life. She’d been Beatrice’s sister. Camila’s sister. Mary’s friend. That didn’t go away. It had still been there, at the end. It was still here now.
“Alright,” she said eventually, “Reya told me that by the time they’re here, it’s too late. When the barrier gets thin enough, in a few years, but before they get out, she wants me to cross over. With you, actually. We talked about you over there. And —” she bit her tongue, skipping over the last member of their little team, “and some Tarasks. And we’ll take the fight to them, before they can start to properly influence humans. Once we’ve put them down, she can rebuild the barrier and we’re good for another thousand years, or whatever. Maybe forever. She was a little vague on that one.”
Lilith nodded, slowly, unaware of her deception. “Reya hates me. I’m the variable She couldn’t control. But I have my uses, I suppose. And the Halo?”
Ava shrugged. “I kind of think She’s getting bored of the whole warrior nun shtick.” She had an alarming, gnawing suspicion that once she’d outlived her usefulness, Reya was thinking of ways to keep the thing for Herself. What that meant for Ava, she didn’t really want to think about.
“So,” Lilith said, “we’ve got a few years. There must be things we can do in the meantime. Things to help the fight. You know, like the Crown of Thorns did.”
“Maybe,” Ava shrugged, “she didn’t tell me about that. Maybe Yasmine would know.”
“The Copt girl?”
Ava nodded. “Speaking of Yasmine…”
“You want to know how the OCS are doing.” Lilith looked at her sidelong.
Ava nodded. “Couldn’t leave them my number.”
“Well, as far as I know, none of the OCS died at Adriel’s church. They were too well-trained for that.”
“They all got out?”
Lilith nodded. “No clue where they are now, though.”
“You haven’t seen them?”
“I don’t think I’m in their good books, at the moment.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “Well, can’t you take me to Cat’s Cradle? That way I can find out for myself.”
Lilith shook her head, finally earnest again. “I can’t teleport you, if that’s what you’re asking. I cross over to Reya’s realm to do it. She doesn’t give the smallest damn what I do. But you’d be different. Like raw meat in a tiger cage. Even if I wanted to carry your diminutive arse halfway around the world, there’s every chance we’d both end up trapped with Her again.”
Ava bit back a curse. She’d hoped, in that moment, that there’d be an easy way out. A way back. But, of course, it wasn’t going to be that simple. “Well, can you find out for me?”
Lilith tilted her head, a sly expression creeping back over her face. “You just said they’d be at Cat’s Cradle. I just told you that as far as I know, they’re all safe and well. What do you really want to know, Ava?”
Belatedly, she joined the dots. Lilith had been there when Beatrice had sent her through the portal. She’d been watching on, presumably, right when Ava had told Beatrice that she loved her.
“Do you want to know about the Order, or do you want to know about Beatrice?”
“Screw you, Lilith,” Ava muttered, feeling her face heat up. “It’s not what you think.”
Lilith audibly snorted. “Sure. And I’m the Queen of Spain.”
“You could be, with your whole,” Ava waved her arm helplessly, “thing going on.”
“Well, I’m not. And you’re in love with Beatrice,” Lilith sniggered. At Ava’s glare, she only smiled wider, all sharp teeth. “Remember, I’ve known her since she was a gangly fifteen-year old with a bad haircut. I’ll have to find the photos for you some time.”
“Um. We’ll come back to that,” Ava said, distracted by the mental image.
“Anyway,” Lilith said, showing a rare modicum of pity, “enough about your tragic love affair with my socially inept little sister. Who is, need I remind you, a nun. What are you going to do now?”
Another shout drifted over to them, closer this time, and Ava wondered how long she and Lilith had been here for. She glanced back. “I just need… money. And a plan. I need to get back to them. To Bea — don’t be fucking weird about it.”
“How are you going to get there?” Lilith asked dubiously, a little of her old haughtiness reappearing in her expression. “You’re… hardly a frequent flyer.”
“Yeah, well,” she said absently, picking up her rake and nudging Lilith off her stepladder with her foot, “haven’t figured that out, yet. It might take me a while. Can you…” Lilith craned her neck to watch her head back up the ladder and rake another set of branches, “can you get a message to them? That I’m alright? That I’m trying to get back?”
“I’ll think about it,” Lilith said gruffly, glancing back over her shoulder.
“And can you just… can you check on her? Please?”
“I really don’t think she’ll want to see me,” Lilith said, and then she jerked her attention back to Ava. “Someone’s coming. Look, I’ll try to get you some news. And cash, I suppose. If that’ll help. Just… give me time.”
Ava laughed bitterly. “Time’s all I have, Lilith.”
Lilith stared up at her, face twisting into something uncertain, then she nodded. “I’ll see you soon.” Before Ava could reply, Lilith’s form seemed to jerk and twist, folding down into itself like a concertina, before collapsing with a small, intense burst of orange light. All that was left behind, when Ahmed emerged from the trees to call her to break for lunch, was the metallic, crackling smell of ozone.
“How long’s it been now?”
“Babygirl, you know there’s no point asking me that,” and Ava, somehow, could hear the laughter in Mary’s voice, despite the fact she wasn’t sure she was using her ears at all.
“Well, how long does it feel for you?” She looked at Mary, or thought she looked at what she thought was Mary. She saw Mary’s dark braids, her solid build, her expressive eyes and warm, beautiful face. But she blurred around the edges. When Ava took her eyes off her, she seemed to fade into nothing. It was like the rest of this place: a videogame setting not fully rendered; people and items and spaces blossoming into being in front of her, collapsing out of her vision once their purpose was fulfilled.
Ava wondered if she looked the same to Mary.
Mary shrugged, the motion making Ava a little motion-sick. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like anything. But I’m different to you. You can move through this. Time. Space. I can’t. Reya brought me here, and I’m here until She sends me somewhere else.”
Ava shook her head. “We thought you were dead , Mary.” The memory still hurt, still made her heart pound and her head spin.
“I’m sorry,” Mary replied, softly, the tone scratching warm and comforting in the space between her brows. “I know I shouldn’t have gone rogue, at the Vatican. I would have died, if She hadn’t —”
“I know,” Ava interrupted her, “and I’m glad you’re not. I just… I don’t want to leave you here. I don’t want to lose you again.”
Mary smiled. “You’re not losing me. I’ll be here, waiting. I’d rather you out there than stuck here with me. Anyway, it sounds like you’ve made your decision.”
Ava nodded. “I’m going to get out. She’s almost ready to let me go, but I’m not going to be catapulted forward. I’m going back. To Bea. No matter what.”
Mary’s smile became a smirk. “I’ll admit, that’s not something I saw coming when I kicked you off that cliff. I support it, though. Lord knows the two of you might actually balance each other out.”
Ava rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help but smile back.
“You remember what I said?” Mary said, voice dropping conspiratorially, as though Reya could hear them. Maybe she could. “Intention. That’s how everything works around here. If your will is stronger than Hers — I reckon you’ll go exactly where you want to go. And thinking of Beatrice —” she winked lasciviously, “I think that’ll do the trick.”
Ava blushed, but when Mary opened her arms, she fell into the embrace without hesitation. Just like what she saw, and what she heard, what she felt was real and unreal. The weight and warmth and strength of Mary was there, but not. Like a flickering hologram, or the phasing of the Halo. “‘Til then,” Mary muttered into her hair, “you just gotta hang in there. Don’t forget her. Or the others. Or everything you love about life. Don’t let this place break you, kid, alright?”
Ava nodded into her shoulder, holding back tears, and Mary rubbed her back comfortingly. For a long moment they hung there, in time, and, as tended to happen in this strange in-between, the past and the future faded away. She was here, in Mary’s fluttering embrace, and that was all there was.
Until that embrace became solid, and suffocating, constraining. Ava straightened and opened her eyes. White robes. She tried to pull away, but the iron grip, nothing like Mary’s comforting hold, only released her enough to see that perfect face — Reya.
It hadn’t happened like this.
“You’re mine,” Reya breathed, Her face coldly serene, “and you serve me.” And Reya pushed. Ava lost her footing and fell, back and back, and down and down, and out of time and space into a void beyond this world, and the next, and any other, where there was nothing but the cold empty darkness and the deathly quiet and her endless fall.
Ava jerked awake with a laboured gasp, the Halo burning warm and urgent in her back. She fought her way out of the sheets in a moment of blind panic, something ripping as she surfaced. Then, she recognised the bare walls, the low ceiling, the small washstand in the corner. Her room on the farm.
She was alone. The room was lit in an eerie grey-blue, long shadows stretching across the floor and walls. The curtains were thin and did little to keep out the silvery starlight. Her body ached slightly, still adjusting to the rigours of the tasks Ahmed and Mohamed assigned her daily after an eternity existing outside of her body, her optimised control of the Halo meaning she didn’t bother to soothe them. She was thirsty.
Ava reached for her waterglass and drained it, uncomfortably aware of the cooling sweat coating her forehead, the back of her neck, her chest. It chilled her.
So, Lilith hadn’t just brought sarcasm with her when she’d dropped by last week. She’d apparently triggered dreams, too. Dreams about what had happened in the endless night of the other side. It wasn’t a particularly welcome gift.
Alone, in the slightly chilly room, drowning in an old nightdress of Nour’s, Ava thought of Mary.
She wasn’t dead, no. But she may as well be. She was stuck there, at the mercy of Reya, until she was released. And that wouldn’t happen until they won the war. Or, Ava supposed, one of Reya’s celestial squad decided to pick her off anyway.
Ava clenched her eyes shut, guilt and anger and pitiful grief swirling uncomfortably at the base of her throat. An urge to reach for the Halo grew — to try to plunge herself into that cold, remote place and pull Mary back out with her. For a moment, she considered it, and felt the swelling power in her hands. But it didn’t work like that. All she’d do is draw a Tarask or five to the El Taweels’ farm, and possibly get her dubious running around Earth privileges rescinded by her cosmic boss.
Ava extinguished the force. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, the shock of hot tears making her realise that she was crying. She couldn’t help Mary, now. She could only remember her; she could only hope that Mary would be waiting to join the fight when the barrier fell and Reya called on them.
Ava sat against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chest, taking deep, measured breaths. Not for the first time, she wondered if it were time to cut her losses — to run, again. To slip out of the old stone of the farmhouse in the predawn chill, the few banknotes Mohamed had given her shoved in her jeans pocket, and try to find a way back. A way out.
She started at a distant, sharp pop from somewhere outside the window, beyond the edge of the farm. It was immediately followed by a distinctive rat-tat-tat that she'd heard before.
Gunfire.
Ava leapt out of the bed, all agonizing forgotten, and pulled on the clothes she’d abandoned on the floor the previous evening. Familiar adrenaline flooded her limbs; in her back, the halo glowed, excited, ready to be called on.
Ava shoved her feet into her boots — the only part of her old gear that had been salvageable — and raced out of her room, down the corridor, heading for the front door. She was so focussed on her goal that when a hand seized the back of her collar, stopping her in her tracks, her first thought was one of utter bafflement. Bea would be disappointed she’d gotten so quickly out of practice. Although, in her defence, it had been years.
“Ava,” Ahmed’s familiar voice was low and serious in the gloom. His grip on her collar loosened, and she spun to face him. He looked tired, and drawn, but not scared, and she took a breath. “You cannot go. It —” he made a little noise of frustration, his brows creasing in consternation, before he gave up and switched to Arabic, “it’s too dangerous to go out.”
She understood enough now to get his gist, but she wanted to fight it. “What’s happening? ” she asked, a little hesitant on her pronunciation of the words. Ahmed let go of her collar. He sighed, and beckoned her into the kitchen. The rest of the family were there, all sitting very still. Nour’s mother, on seeing her, immediately went to the sideboard and poured her a cup of mint tea.
She repeated her question in English to Nour as she sat.
“What always happens,” Nour replied softly and sadly, her own teacup trembling in her hands. “The peace breaks. It sounds like it’s at the Khalab homestead. God willing, they’re out safe.”
Ava didn’t understand; not really. She looked between them all: Mohamed, looking dreadfully old and shrunken at the head of the table; Aisha, standing stock still at the window, with her back to the room; Ahmed and his brother Youssef leaning in the doorway, murmuring quietly together.
“What about the police?”
Youssef snorted, hearing her question, and replied too quickly in Arabic for her to follow.
Nour shook her head. “They will already be there.” She didn’t say more.
“Well…” Ava hovered, half out of her seat, the adrenaline still fizzing around her arms and legs, making her twitchy. She wanted to run, to scream, to fight. “Can’t we — help? Can’t we go out there and, I don’t know, defend them?”
For the first time since Ava had met her, anger flashed sudden and sharp across Nour’s face. “And what? Get arrested? Get shot? Get a target on our backs? You want it to be our home next?”
Ava blanched, and fell silent.
The anger drained away as quickly as it had arisen, and Nour shook her head, looking desperately sad. “There’s no heroes here, Ava. People have fought and died over this land for years, decades. The only difference it has made is in the list of names to mourn. We can’t —” she gestured around the room, her family watching on solemnly, even if they didn't understand her words. “We die, and what happens? Our blood spills into the soil. And our bodies do, too, rotting away until it’s like we were never here at all. The land’s lost. The name’s lost. So the only thing we can do is… survive. Live on.” She took a long drink of tea. “God willing, one day my child will inherit this land. And he’ll cultivate it, in the way his grandfather has. And his grandfather’s grandfather did. For that to happen, we need to live, first. There’s no victory in death. Not for us. I think,” she said, quietly, “that you know something about that. Do you not?”
Ava was abruptly, forcefully taken back there. Adriel’s church. The tears in Beatrice’s eyes, and the break in her voice, telling Ava she couldn’t live; she wouldn’t live, without her. How easily, and how pointlessly, Michael had died, his heart beating futilely in Lilith’s hand.
She let her own tears fall, and she nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Nour squeezed her hand. “It’s easy to want to be the hero. To be a martyr. But we have to just… persist. Protect what we can, and what we love. And protect ourselves, for them. That’s what… not everyone understands. Our own friends, and brothers, and sisters.”
Ava squeezed back. “I do know… something about that. All I ever wanted to do was live, Nour.”
“And you had to be the hero,” Nour said, quietly. Ava began to wonder what she’d deduced. What she’d seen on those blurry TV feeds leaking out of Spain.
“Not just me,” she shook her head. “I have to get back. I… I left people there.”
Nour nodded. “What will you do, Ava? What do you want to do? To live?” Her gaze was softening, even as the rat-tat-tat of the gunfire continued in the distance, coming no closer. Something about her tone alerted her family to their dreaming, and Aisha came to sit with her daughter, a weathered hand coming to rest on her shoulder.
Ava smiled slightly, thinking about it. “How long have you got? I want to run along the beach again. I want to dance all night. Climb a mountain.” Nour murmured the translation to her mother, as Ava’s mind drifted to the place she’d been happiest; the alpine lakes, the lilting German, the smell of smoke and sticky booze. “I worked in a bar for a while. Maybe I’d go back there.” Beatrice’s eyes on her, her dry tone. Warm, cautious hands on her body as they trained, and danced, and laughed. Her, mussed and soft in their bed on the rare mornings Ava had woken up first. “Not alone, though. The girl I love — ” she chanced a nervous look at Nour, but she didn’t flinch, a slight smile hovering at the corners of her eyes as she translated for her mother, “I’ll find her, too. It was all for her, in the end.”
Aisha’s eyes filled with tears, and she clasped Ava and Nour’s joined hands, too, murmuring something Ava couldn’t catch.
They waited like that, sharing dreams, stories, wishes, until the last ominous sounds of the disturbance petered out, and the night’s inky darkness was replaced with the chilly grey of pre-dawn; until Youssef, cautiously, left the house to find out what had happened, and offer the family’s help to the Khalabs.
Ava, Mohamed and Ahmed went straight out to the olive groves; the harvest still needed to be collected, olives pressed and oil bottled. Vehicles and fences needed to be repaired, the house swept and livestock fed.
Ava found herself working feverishly, helping to cover Youssef’s share of the farmstead’s tasks. The events of the morning had made her wary and restless, her disrupted sleep warring with her spiking adrenaline and the Halo’s persistent hum, until all she was aware of was a vague, disparate buzzing between her ears.
When Lilith rematerialised behind her, accompanied by the scent of ozone and a crack like a firework, Ava didn’t even flinch. “Lilith.”
“Ava.” And there was a trace of, dare Ava say, disappointment in that response. She dropped her wheelbarrow to straighten and turn; something hit the back of her head, light but a bit sharp. Ava resisted the urge to make a sinkhole open up and swallow the other woman, instead shooting her a glare as she bent to retrieve the projectile. It seemed that Lilith's tight combat suit had outlived its welcome, and she'd swapped it for some kind of canvas overall get up that was less demonic agent of evil, more painter and decorator.
The item she’d thrown at Ava was a little packet of Haribo.
“You’re welcome,” Lilith said.
Ava almost retorted, but then, she did like a Starmix. She clenched the packet in her hand and folded her arms. “So?”
“So?”
“I didn’t ask for Haribo, Lilith,” Ava said archly.
Lilith held her hand out. “If you don’t want them, I’ll have them back.”
Ava shoved the sweets in the pocket of her comically overlarge jeans, and Lilith rolled her eyes. She pulled something else out of her roomy front pocket, and threw it at Ava, who caught it instinctively. It was a soft leather wallet, stuffed with unfamiliar banknotes, a half-filled loyalty card for a coffee chain in Haifa, and a driver’s license belonging to a middle aged man called Oron.
“There’s not that much in there,” Lilith shrugged, “maybe a few hundred euros’ worth of shekels. But it’s better than nothing.”
“Sister Lilith,” Ava smirked, “I never thought you’d stoop to petty thievery. Hooliganism. Delinquency.”
“The murder was on brand, though?” Lilith pointed out, eyebrow raised, but then evidently decided not to dwell on it. “Anyway. I paid the OCS a visit. Or tried.”
The gifts were immediately forgotten; Ava’s heart began to pound in her chest. The uncomfortable, overtired buzzing of her brain seemed to increase in frequency. “And?”
“Well, I couldn’t get in,” Lilith said flatly, “Salvius has put a damn forcefield around the Cradle. It’s like putting your head on a car window trying to teleport through. Times a thousand. And I’m hardly about to knock on the front door. Camila will probably shoot me on sight. Repeatedly.”
Ava stared at her. “Is that what you turned up here to tell me?” She was way too tired for this.
“I brought you snacks, too,” she smirked, but saw something in Ava’s face which sobered her. “Not quite. I watched, for a while.” She ticked off with her fingers, “Camila is safe. Mother Superion, Vincent, disappointingly — all safe. Dora, too. And the Copt. She seems to have changed her denomination; I can’t imagine her episcopate was too happy about that.” Ava closed her eyes in relief, though it was momentary. Lilith named a couple of other girls; those who Ava had only met a few times, back at her first days with the Order, or her last, and she made no mention of the girl who haunted Ava’s every waking moment.
Her patience snapped; the Halo propelled her over to Lilith and she shoved the taller woman back against one of the olive trees, her forearm pressed to her throat.
Lilith, strangely, let her. Her hands were up, palms outwards. Her surprise was quickly swallowed, not by anger, but by something carefully blank.
Ava let go, and sucked in a breath. “Stop fucking about, Lilith. Tell me about her.”
Lilith looked away. “She’s gone, Ava. No —“ quickly, she leapt away from Ava’s glowing grip, her hands raised in supplication, “she’s not dead. Sorry. No. I mean, she left the Order. I checked in the village, the guy that runs the taxis out remembers dropping her off in Malaga. No habit, he said.”
Ok. Not dead. Ava’s legs felt shaky and weak. She squatted in the dry scrub underfoot, gathering her thoughts. Beatrice had left the robe and the oath and the institution behind her to venture into the world. She was living her life — just like Ava had told her to. All Ava had to do now was find her. Easy.
“You know where she went?”
Lilith shook her head, and Ava’s disappointment was bitter on her tongue.
“Well, can you find her?”
“How on God's green earth am I meant to find her, Ava?” Lilith snapped. “Seven billion people on this planet, and you want me to find her. Someone who will know very well how not to be found.”
“Not when it’s me,” Ava said hopelessly, “she’ll want to be found by me. She —“ Ava glared at Lilith again. She wasn’t letting her off that easily. “I know you went all Liam Neeson on Vincent back after the Vatican.”
“Liam Neeson?” Lilith drawled.
“You know. I will find you, and I will kill you,” Ava said in a poor imitation of the line, but Lilith just seemed nonplussed. “Jesus. Watch a movie or two in your downtime, will you? Taken. It’s great. Anyway. You found Vincent. You can find Bea. Sniffer dog, remember.”
Lilith laughed humourlessly. “Do you think that I have nothing better to do than run around completing little errands for you?”
“Kinda, yeah,” Ava said sourly. “What are you doing? Beating up fundies? Stealing candy from babies? Making amends for all the murdering?”
“Fuck you, Ava,” Lilith snapped, and turned to leave, and Ava saw the slim thread connecting her to the rest of the world — to Beatrice — begin to unravel.
It made her reckless. “Don’t you want to find her? Haven’t you lost enough people?”
Lilith froze, half turned away from her. “Don’t,” she said, breathing hard through her nose, “don’t talk to me about loss.”
Ava knew she had leverage; she knew it she could only use it once, and she knew she was going to use it now. “Mary’s really pissed at you, Lilith,” she said, “she told me herself, over there.”
Lilith spun and launched at her, wings unfurling, claws extending, mouth twisting into a snarl, but just as she could sense Ava now, Ava realised she could sense her; the halo flared into action, an extension of herself, and she jinked away easily, jumping far higher than was natural and landing sure-footed into one of the surrounding olive trees.
Lilith, hovering six feet from the ground beneath her, made an indescribable noise of frustration and rage, and followed. Their cat-and-mouse pursuit continued for a few long, tiring moments, but Ava wasn’t looking to fight, and so when Lilith’s flight grew a fraction fatigued, she spotted the opening in the listing turn of her shoulder and sprang on her back between the wings. She wrapped her legs around Lilith’s waist and got her arm around her throat in a sleeper hold. Ava squeezed, just like Beatrice had taught her, and Lilith’s flight stalled; together, they dropped in the air by a good two feet. “Land,” Ava gritted out, right into Lilith’s ear, “or I’ll choke you.”
Lilith landed, but Ava didn’t get off, and the taller woman, unsteady and struggling to breathe, fell to her knees. Ava, pitiless, kept up the hold. “If you want me to tell you about Mary, you go and you find Bea. Then we’ll talk.”
Lilith took a long moment to acquiesce. She nodded, slowly, her hands dropping from Ava’s forearm. Ava saw how the claw marks she’d left on there healed perfectly and instantly, barely making a drop in the Halo’s newly endless reserves. She also knew that Lilith, had she been so inclined, could have done a lot more damage.
Ava let go. Lilith fell forwards, but didn’t stay on her hands and knees for more than a second. She wiped her hand across her mouth, looking away from Ava, gasping for breath. “Is … is she alive? Ava. Just… give me that. Please.”
Ava didn’t want to feel sympathy for her, but she did, and she bit her lip, deciding how to respond. “She’s … she’s not dead. It’s — hard to describe. Give me time.”
“And your girlfriend,” Lilith spat, angry. She shook her head. “Don’t expect any more from me, Warrior Nun. You’ve taken it all already.”
She didn’t wait for Ava to reply before she disappeared with a fiery, angry crackle.
Ava grimaced as more dry dust irritated her eyes; another gust of wind stirred the scrub around her, and she rubbed them, hard, to stop the stinging. Maybe she could use the Halo, actually, to keep the dirt out. She tried it, and almost burned her eyebrows off. Something she’d have to practice later, then.
The sun was setting over the Mediterranean to the west, finally promising relief from the day’s continual heat, but the highway and runway that Ava was surveying remained stubbornly busy. Trucks and military vehicles passed frequently, sirens blaring and lights bright. On the other side of the highway, and past the high, razor-wire topped fence, was the drone of aeroplane engines and ground services trucks, working ceaselessly to prepare the vessel.
A flight to Madrid was departing tonight.
Ava had said her goodbyes to the El Taweels several days earlier, packing the banknotes Mohamed had carefully pressed into her hand into the wallet Lilith had sourced. Nour had written down her phone number on a scrap of paper, which Ava had tucked in there too, and she’d hugged Ava tight. Then, Youssef had driven her in comfortable silence to the train station in Afula. He’d put his hands to his heart and wished her a safe journey, sincerely and quietly.
Ava had taken the first bus she could get out of Afula to the port city of Haifa. She'd hiked across the city to find the airport, and tried to buy a plane ticket. That plan had been scuppered when she’d found that plane tickets were both outrageously pricey and a logistical nightmare for the recently-dead and transcontinentally displaced. She’d fled the airport before the customer service rep could call security on her, found a dorm bed in a hostel where the clerk had been far too busy staring at her chest to remember to ask for a copy of her passport, and from there, she’d begun to plan.
Well, sort of. Ava’s planning had commenced with the objective of gathering intel, just like Beatrice had taught her. She had done so by accepting the invitation of some of the hostel’s other guests to relax on the beach, which had quickly descended into an evening of drinking warm beers and smoking smuggled Egyptian cigarettes. Ava joined in, momentarily charmed by the ease and the friendliness and the normality of the others, who were impressed with her linguistic abilities and intrigued as to her story, but she dodged their questions and, after a guy from Canada whose name she’d never caught tried to get a little too friendly, she’d left them there on the beach and drifted alone through the city’s unfamiliar streets. It made her miss Beatrice, acutely and painfully. She missed her steady presence by her side, her dry wit, her soft care.
That was the first night in Haifa. Ava had avoided the backpackers since then, choosing to gather better intel elsewhere. She spent some of her precious shekels on a cheap, no-brand phone and a basic data plan, and she memorised the city’s layout and transport links. She went back to the airport and painstakingly copied out its international itinerary; she studied the complex process that was undertaken to clear passengers and luggage alike for boarding a flight. Notably, it involved heavy security and a mountain of documents that she didn’t have.
Frustrated in that endeavour, Ava started to use her phone and her data to learn about the planes while hanging out in the cafe whose half-filled loyalty card she’d received. She learned how they’d prepare the planes for flight and load them with luggage, and where it was possible to stow away and hide, unnoticed, for the duration of the flight. The three-quarter likelihood of dying in the undercarriage was not an appealing option, Ava thought grimly, but she did have an intergalactic supercell in her back, which surely must be a help. But surely she didn’t need to risk that. Once she was close enough to the thing, she decided, she could just phase in and find an empty seat.
And so, plan (or rough imitation of a plan) made, Ava crouched in the scrub next to the highway, waiting for her phone timer to buzz at 9:22pm so she could hurtle across six lanes of traffic and phase through the airport's perimeter wall. That was right before the luggage would be loaded for the once-weekly Haifa to Madrid evening flight, when the plane would be relatively unsupervised.
This time in 24 hours, she thought grimly, she’d be that much closer.
Her phone buzzed. The road ahead was, mercifully, clear. At the perimeter wall, Ava barely even had to think about it before the Halo vibrated softly in her back, everything becoming insubstantial and faded, like through old glass, as she passed through the concrete. She tried not to remember falling out of concrete, into strong arms, into soft eyes.
It was easy, and quick, like blinking, and just like that, Ava found herself on the tarmac. She hadn’t appreciated quite how long the runway was, though. Ava stood, at the bottom end of it, looking out across the vast exposed space towards, in the distance, the shadow of the terminal and the smaller dots of the aircraft. “Ah, fuck,” she sighed to herself, and set off at a Halo-enhanced sprint.
It would have been a perfect sort-of plan, if not for the military police. By the time Ava had realised she had a problem, her ride tantalisingly close and her exit almost achieved, the shout to stop was already audible through a megaphone; she’d barely decided to ignore that shout when the first shot whipped overhead not far over her shoulder. “Bollocks,” she muttered, a word Beatrice had not meant to teach her in Switzerland, and she broke into a sprint, changing direction and heading for the cover of a smaller hangar on the other side of the runway.
A droning alarm swelled out from the terminal; Ava could see movement from the doors ahead, black-suited figures bursting onto the tarmac, guns raised, and she began to evaluate whether her sort-of plan had been slightly, significantly, or unsalvageably derailed. Another bullet whistled out; Ava instinctively phased, saving her left knee from obliteration.
Beatrice would have had a back up plan, or six. Hell, Beatrice wouldn’t have tried this in the first place if this was how wrong it could go.
An engine roared; a military truck skidded down the tarmac from an observation tower some distance away. Ava, finally, began to feel the faintest tendrils of panic. She felt for the Halo, phasing backwards and into the relative safety of the hanger, mind racing and heart pounding, wondering whether to run or to hide or to try and fly, but everything she’d heard about flying over Israel seemed to be a really bad idea, and she wished more than anything that Beatrice were here to help her out of it —
With a crackle and that acrid whiff of ozone, Lilith unfurled herself right in front of Ava, looking nakedly furious. “What the hell are you doing?!”
Lilith seized her arm and dragged her to her feet, and Ava didn’t resist as she shoved her out of the back door of the hangar, where the drone of the alarm and the rumble of the trucks and the shouting of the soldiers seemed so much louder and more urgent. There was still a good seven hundred feet between them and the airport’s perimeter, and they couldn’t outrun a truck. Lilith glared at Ava, glared back in the direction they’d come, and then she seized both of Ava’s shoulders and closed her eyes, and Ava felt that infernal heat once more. She was the grain of sand, in Reya’s hourglass, being forced through its narrow throat, harsh and unyielding and painful, and as she focused on pushing through, helpless and desperate to escape, she felt something else. She felt Reya’s eyes on her. Felt the startling cold of Her grip, beginning to seize and constrict.
Ava pushed ; something popped ; they stumbled to ground which was slick and wet and unexpectedly cool through Ava’s thrifted sweatpants.
“Are you serious?!” She heard Lilith exclaim thunderously from beside her, before immediately picking herself up and storming a couple of metres away. Ava stayed there, on her back, trying not to be sick. There were a couple of cool streams of water trickling ceaselessly on her head and on her stomach.
Her heartbeat slowed; her nausea and dizziness faded, and she recognised where they were. Apparently, and impressively, Lilith had managed to teleport them smack bang into the middle of a water feature in HaKishon Park, barely three kilometres from the airport. Ava took one last deep breath, and rolled out from the unpleasant, unending drizzle.
“What the fuck, Ava?” Lilith erupted, eyes flashing like signal fires under the dark line of her brows. “Are you trying to get yourself blown up? Cause some kind of international incident? End up in a fucking black site research lab?”
“No,” Ava said, swallowing down the lingering, crawling dread of Reya's touch, “I wasn’t. I was trying to board my flight to Spain.”
Lilith quite literally threw her hands in the air and made some sort of drawn out growl of rage, pacing back and forth in front of her.
Ava watched her dumbly. “Why did you come help me?”
Lilith did a couple more rounds, hands going to her head and rubbing it like she needed one of those head scratchers Ava had found in a thrift store once and immediately gifted to a bemused Beatrice in Switzerland. “Apparently , something about you using the Halo under conditions of abject terror gives me the worst brain freeze I’ve ever known,” she said with disgust. “It’s like I’m compelled to come and save you.”
Lilith looked distraught at the concept, and Ava, despite herself, let out a laugh. If it was tinged with hysteria, who cared? Not her, right now. “Holy shit. You actually are my guard dog.” Ava laid back on the grass, ignoring the unpleasant chill where her clothes had been soaked by the fountain, and wheezed with laughter. “This is priceless.”
“Fuck you,” Lilith grunted, and she grabbed Ava under the armpits and hauled her to her feet. “I needed to come and find you anyway. You weren’t at your farm, obviously.”
Her admission immediately punctured Ava’s brittle amusement. “You’ve got news?”
“I have.” Lilith nodded, but then, she paused. “You first. Mary.”
“No, fuck you,” Ava snapped, fear and rage rearing quickly back to the surface, “you know I’m good for it. You tell me first.”
Lilith’s lip curled in contempt. “Alright. Come on.” She started walking down the wide boulevard of the deserted park, her long legs covering ground quickly, and Ava had to speed-walk to keep up. “Don’t tell me how I know,” she said, bluntly, “because I won’t tell you. Beatrice is in Lisbon.”
The implication was physically painful. “Why the fuck —”
“Don’t go there.” Lilith snapped, cutting her off. “Frankly, I’d rather not think about it.”
Ava called her something unrepeatable in Portuguese.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. How do you know, though?”
Lilith didn’t slow, so Ava drew on the Halo. Just a touch; just a tad. With that help, she drew level with her taller companion easily. “Lilith. I want to know. Maybe I can do it myself, if you tell me.”
Lilith blinked and looked at her, narrow-eyed. They kept walking. Then, she pulled out a pendant from under her shirt. Ava recognised it immediately.
“Nun code,” she muttered, “of course.”
“Fortunately, no one's bothered to disconnect my pager. Bit stupid of them, to be honest. But anyway, this morning your girl sent one message out, over the senior sisters’ frequency, to say that she was safe and in Lisbon. Nothing else.”
Beatrice was safe. For a long moment, that was all Ava could think of. No matter what else, she was safe. And she was out there, in Ava’s home country. Ava stared at Lilith. “Can I have that?”
“You can’t use it, you cretin,” Lilith snapped. “No. You can’t have it.”
Ava glowered, but didn’t argue the point. “Well, can you, like… narrow it down for me? Lisbon’s a big place.”
“No,” Lilith said flatly. “I’ve given you your starting point. I’m not going anywhere near Beatrice.”
“Why not? It would make things easier,” Ava pointed out. “You can’t teleport me — believe me, you really can’t teleport me, that was less than an hour’s walk’s worth of interdimensional hitchhiking and Reya knew about it — but you could bring her here instead.”
Lilith stopped abruptly, and Ava smacked into her back. She didn’t give an inch, and turned to stare at her incredulously. “Am I running a taxi service? A long-distance intercontinental train? A passenger jet?” She demanded. “ No . You want to find your girlfriend, you can do it yourself. I have other shit to do.”
“Again, bit of a problem when you sabotage my damn exit plan, Lilith.”
“Oh, should I not have come to drag your sorry arse out of the hole you’d managed to dig for yourself back there?”
Ava shook her head, conceding the point. Lilith had helped. She could still hear, distantly, the sound of sirens. “I need a passport. Or a … I don’t know, a shovel. Shawshank Redemption style. If you haven’t seen that , then we have a problem,” she said, appalled at Lilith’s nonplussed expression.
“You’re not getting a shovel, you idiot,” Lilith shook her head, “keep walking. And tell me about Mary.”
Ava did: she told her how Mary had been pulled into Reya’s realm, somehow, at the Vatican — something about the mass of demons unleashed by Adriel destabilising the barrier between this world and Hers. How she was trapped there, lacking Lilith’s Tarask blood or Ava’s Halo or Michael’s Divinium to help her move between planes, and how Reya intended to use her, in the end, to fight alongside them.
Lilith took it rather better than she’d feared. “And afterwards?” She demanded, face unreadable. “After we’ve done Reya’s dirty work?”
“I don’t know , Lil,” Ava said shortly. “Maybe She’ll let her go. Maybe She’ll kill us all. But for now, Mary’s okay. That’s all I have.”
“Okay.” Lilith snorted, and shook her head, but Ava didn’t miss how she wiped her eyes furiously with the back of her hand. “This is insane.”
“Tell me about it,” Ava agreed.
They reached the northern boundary of the park, which looked out towards the city’s port, and Lilith stopped. “You can’t take a plane out. It’s too complicated, too dangerous. But we can get you onto a ship.”
Ava looked out at the winking lights of the port, sending an orange haze into the twilight above. Then, she looked at Lilith, smiling sharply, recalling her distant shape, watching on as Ava sailed out of Spain, almost six months ago and a lifetime away. “Just like old times.”
Lilith couldn’t quite conceal the smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. “Indeed.”