Rebecca Lim - Fury

As Ryan ducks his head to enter the vehicle, I flow up and across the back of the car, a pocket of turbulence, indistinguishable from the metallic black of the paintwork. I crouch weightlessly upon the roof like a runner, giving myself perfectly uninterrupted 360-degree views in every direction. By the time the driver enters the deserted street that runs along the lake’s shore, the gates are already closing against us and Bianca and Tomaso are quickly lost to sight.

As the car picks up speed, it becomes obvious that a thick and unnatural fog is building slowly but steadily over the lake, rolling outwards towards the banks on both sides as if it would swallow the world.

Bona fortuna , I whisper again, my thoughts flying up to that household of brave souls upon the hill. Godspeed .

The fog brings the dead to the lake’s shore.

I see them in the faint blush of light that signals daybreak as our car sweeps down the deserted, winding road that runs right beside the water, the wind soughing eerily through the pines that line it. There are scores of them. They drift along the road, down through the terraced gardens, anguished and confused, responding in some speechless, primal way to something in the water.

As we pass, every wraith lifts its head as if it can scent me, turns to follow my progress though I am nothing to the human eye, just a patch of turbulence, a cloud of energy, surfing by on top of a sleek and anonymous European car. But, still, they seek me out, and I feel a ripple, a chill, move across my soul at the sight of them all gathering.

Our driver does not see what I see; has no clue of what surrounds us. He ploughs the car straight through the grieving figure of an old man drifting in the centre of the road, dressed in the same shapeless cardigan, button-down shirt and suit pants he was last wearing in life. The car shreds him to pieces. When I look behind me, the apparition has already re-formed: his ashen face and eyes trained on our disappearing taillights, arms outstretched as if pleading, before recommencing his mindless passage down to the water.

The fog builds and builds upon the lake beneath a heavy sky brimming with leaden, menacing clouds that the sun cannot break through. We travel through a weird, yellow-grey half-light, as if traversing some scenic boulevard of the underworld. After a time, there are no more dead lining the road, which tells me we have left Moltrasio and its new-minted spirits behind.

As we fly down a road that suddenly turns inland, away from the water, there’s a vast, rending sound, a giant crack — like sustained thunder — and the ground ripples beneath the wheels of the pitching car like fabric, before steadying. The streetscape we move through — wealthy compounds hidden behind high, vine-covered fences and massive iron gates; the pastel walls of two- or three-storey dwellings built right up against the edges of the road; neat rows of compact cars parked nose to tail; the branches of spreading chestnut trees — seems to shimmer for a moment, to tremble.

In response, the driver floors the accelerator. I feel his fear in the way he’s handling the powerful car beneath me, feel his panic in the way we almost fishtail around the bends though the road here is dry and in near perfect condition.

I hear car alarms go off, see lights flare into life in the windows of some of the buildings we flash past. But the booming sound does not recur, and, mile after mile, we leave its unseen source behind us.

We cross a bridge at a punishing, rattling pace, and the lake once more swings into view. We hug its mighty contours for a stretch before turning inland again and losing sight of it altogether. But that last, quick glimpse fills me with a greater apprehension — nothing can be seen of the water’s surface, save that rolling white fog.

For a moment, I imagine I hear a high, whining sound in my inner ear. A questing sound, the kind that might herald the sort of intense pain Luc caused me only hours ago, when he was trying to get inside my head and I didn’t want him there. My reaction is fierce and immediate. I imagine myself as a closed box, a walled compound, smooth on all sides, impervious to attack from any direction — and the sound is cut off, does not recur. Even though I know I’m kidding myself, concentrating hard on shutting Luc out gives me an excuse not to dwell on what lies ahead for me, in Paris.

We head further downhill, further inland, and I begin to see headlights winding up through the foothills in the far distance.

As our driver brakes on approach towards the same police roadblock we encountered yesterday, there’s consternation amongst the gathered officers when they catch sight of our numberplate. A lone officer is sent striding our way, and I hear the hiss and glide of the driver’s side window, then the window on Ryan’s side of the car slides down. The grim-faced officer bends and glances swiftly around the interior of the vehicle, beckons for identity documentation, scans it, returns it, and raises a hand sharply. Moments later, two helmeted Polizia di Stato motorcyclists roar up on either side of our vehicle and we resume our journey southward, one motorbike ahead, the other falling in behind.

Four lanes of normal-looking traffic build up around us as we make a turn to the northwest, and the landscape grows more heavily industrialised. The presence of the two police outriders smooths our passage enormously: gaps in the traffic continually appear, as if by magic, and our driver makes the most of every one. I catch the curious glances directed towards our little convoy from the cabs of other vehicles that pass by, but the thing that draws my attention most is the sky. It’s a normal winter sky out here: steel blue with just a scattering of cloud; a normal morning for this time of year: cold and clear, with only a light breeze riffling through and around me. The contrast to the lake country is startling.

There’s one more major turn-off before the roar of jet turbines fills the sky above. The air grows heavy with the scent of burning aviation fuel and, in no time at all, we’re on the tarmac of a busy airport, with cargo planes and private jets taking off and landing all around us. The noise is immense.

Before our car comes to a stop inside a canyon formed by shipping containers and private hangars, I’ve already vaulted off the roof. I hit the ground silently and upright, nothing more than a vaguely humanoid shimmer of energy, a heat haze. I make my way directly towards a large hangar where a sleek, silver, twin-engine jet with tip-tilted wings, six porthole windows and StA Global Logistics stencilled on it is parked. On the jet’s tail, which is shaped a little like a swallow’s tail, there’s a logo of a galleon in full sail centred above a pair of crossed keys.

The police motorcyclists roar away in formation, back in the direction we came from, as I drift up the collapsible staircase towards the Gulfstream’s open doorway. I enter a cabin that smells of leather, coffee and attar of roses, and see that there are two pilots and a single female crew member already on board.

And the fallen archangel enters the belly of the mechanical bird , I think bleakly, bound for Paris to wreak vengeance on her enemies in the company of the man she loves .

There are so many things wrong with that picture that I don’t even know where to begin.

Ryan’s ‘VIP meet and greet’ takes almost an hour. I spend the time roaming the plane, taking in the exits, the tiger-striped carpet in two shades of cinnamon, the flame-walnut inlay and gold fittings in the spacious washroom, the two coffee makers Ryan was so excited about, and the layout of the seating. There’s enough room to fit twelve passengers comfortably. Up near the cockpit there’s a built-in kitchenette area, then two groupings of two chairs with the aisle running between them. Each pair of facing seats has a small, blond-wood table between them, and a small plasma-screen TV set above each table. Midway back, there’s a grouping of four chairs around a central table positioned across the aisle from a wooden storage unit with a larger plasma-screen TV fixed over it. And at the rear of the plane, two long couches face each other across the central aisle, before there’s another smaller kitchenette area and the OTT washroom.