Rebecca Lim - Fury

His arms around me suddenly seem less rigid, but his voice is still angry. ‘Welcome back.’

He crosses the deserted street running in front of the enormous cast-iron lower gates to the St Alban estate. Still holding me off the ground, he punches the buzzer set into an intercom panel identical to the one at the villa’s main entrance. No one demands that we state our business this time; the huge gates just swing open, shutting smoothly behind us once we’re through.

It’s only a short walk to the guesthouse, which is no longer ablaze with light. Ryan sets me gently down on my feet at the front door. But before he can ring the bell, Bianca yanks the door open, her pale blue eyes tracking me fearfully as Ryan and I cross the threshold.

The house is overheated, the air heavy with the scent of burning incense as if this were the inside of a church.

Ryan pushes his hood back, stuffs his cap into a jacket pocket, as Bianca mutters, ‘ I remember you . From Atelier Re. You were the … the … woman I saw. I wasn’t imagining things. You’re real .’

She circles in front of me, slender and slightly above average in height, with an oval face and dark, perfectly arched brows, light olive skin. In her simple, grey crew-neck sweater and black skinny jeans, her face free of make-up, feet bare, dark, glossy hair still bound in a heavy plait, she looks even younger today than the spoilt-looking couture client I remember.

She stretches a hand out tentatively, as if she would touch me, before catching herself and lowering it. ‘Tomaso is literally freaking out ,’ she murmurs, unable to take her eyes off my shifting, blurring outline, the curls of energy that I give off into the surrounding dimness. ‘After I told him I’d take care of the security at this end on my own, he’s had me checking in every ten minutes. Now that you’re both back inside, maybe he’ll get off my case. She’s … through there,’ she adds hesitantly, pointing down the long, narrow hall. ‘Excuse me while I call him.’

She flips her plait over one shoulder and hurries into a room just to the left of the front door. I hear her lift the handset of a phone.

Ryan takes my hand firmly in his as we head down the corridor, which is lit only by lamplight. I see several more rooms facing onto the hallway from either side, each generously proportioned and elegantly furnished, with modern pieces interleaved with antiques and arresting artworks. The wind rattles the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominate the lake-facing rooms, shrieks at the skylights set at intervals into the unusually pitched roof.

We stop at the end of the hall and gaze into a vast informal dining area. It’s separated by a wall of glass from an even larger outside pool and entertainment area that overlooks the lake below. Beyond the dining area is another short hallway that peters out into darkness. One level down from the dining area, accessed by a set of open ironwork stairs, is a sunken living room filled with broad, comfortable couches and groupings of lamps, games tables and armchairs. I see stereo equipment; shelving overflowing with reading material, records, compact discs and board games; a television the size of a small billboard; a vintage pinball machine.

More stairs lead down from the recessed living area into darkness, and it’s clear that there’s more to the house than meets the eye, that there must be yet more rooms, more levels, below ground. But the wondrous, mazelike steel-and-glass house is nothing in comparison to the tall, pale, dark-haired figure lying on a couch in the centre of the sunken living room, the faintest telltale gleam coming off the surface of her skin, the ends of her hair, her ridiculous knitted hat, her clothes, her booted feet.

I see that her eyes are wide open. She’s staring up through the clear skylight above her head as if she’s communicating with spirits. I follow the line of her gaze and watch the unnatural progress of the dark clouds that have swallowed the moon, the entire shining firmament in which it resides.

Ryan can read my incredible tension and he squeezes my hand, indicating wordlessly that I should go to Nuriel, that what he and I have to say to each other can wait. As I walk away from him towards the stairs, he draws out a seat at the dining table with a loud scrape of chair legs, and I hear him unzip his leather jacket. I turn my head for a moment, get a glimpse of the screen of his mobile phone flaring into life, before I begin to descend. The wind booms hollowly as I get closer and closer to the one I once considered my dearest friend in life.

Nuriel shifts her shattered gaze to mine as I settle lightly on the edge of the couch beside her. We look at each other for a long time, unsmiling, almost in disbelief at finding ourselves together like this, after all that’s happened.

She breaks the silence first, whispering, ‘You know what the hardest thing was? That you never recognised me. Not once, in all those years, all those times I watched over you. I could see you , but it was like you were a witless, soulless … wraith. It was only when you were Irina, and I looked into your eyes on Via Borgonuovo, that I saw … recognition. You can’t know how that felt. To finally have confirmation that some part of you had survived your long ordeal.’

‘Raphael did his work too well,’ I reply quietly. ‘If Luc had not begun seizing the Eight, one by one, I would still be trapped in the manner Raphael devised centuries ago.’

I take her hand and she grips mine fiercely for a second, before the pressure of her hold slackens.

‘He loved you,’ she murmurs, her eyes huge with pain in her pale face. ‘He always has.’

‘So I’m told,’ I reply quietly, seeing Raphael the way he was: sable-eyed, dark-haired, olive-skinned, ready laughter curving the lines of his beautiful mouth.

I get a sudden flash of true memory: of Raphael’s hands upon me, his voice warning me against Luc’s towering vanity, his terrible pride; how, in the end, I would be hurt. I must not have listened. For another memory follows quickly on the heels of the first: of Raphael facing me across a great distance. He was standing just behind Michael’s shoulder when Luc uttered those final, fatal words, my left hand clenched tightly in his right: Then, as an act of faith — of goodwill, shall we call it — take that which is most precious to me. I permit it .

And, as if I’m actually there, somehow reliving the moment, I suddenly see how Raphael’s eyes flew wide, how he divined Luc’s intent before any of us could have. See, too, that he was unable to act in time to prevent what took place. He and Michael had both started forward — like sprinters leaping away at the starter’s gun — trying to catch hold of me. But I was already gone, already lost, the instant Luc cast me down with every ounce of his strength.

How blind I was then, how blind. So undeserving of the love, the web of protection, these elohim wove about me all the long years after.

Nuriel turns her head away, curling over in agony, and the past instantly dissolves. ‘I imagined,’ she gasps, ‘that when we met again face to face, and you knew me for who I am, everything would be all right again in my world. It would all be the way it was, it would all be fixed .’

She gives a laugh that is one-part madness, and as she turns her face back to mine, I see with horror that she’s weeping , the way I’ve learnt to do.

Tears of light course down her face as she cries, ‘I’m not as strong as you are. I don’t think I can survive this. For years, I watched you suffer in this human world as an animal suffers — with just your native arrogance, your indomitable will, to keep you alive. And yet, you remain; you are essentially yourself. Shining and whole, despite the cruelties you have suffered, all the unspeakable things that befell you. As strong and fast, as fierce, as you ever were.’