Rebecca Lim - Fury

Jegudiel appears on the far side of the chamber and prepares to re-enter the water, but I cry out, ‘Look to the mortal!’ — for Ryan’s name would mean nothing to him. ‘The mortal has found him.’

Jegudiel turns, astonished. He’s crossed the length of the flaming lake and is looming over Ryan like a creature of nightmare, faster than I can move to stand between them. Ryan steps away from Selaphiel’s prone body, his hands up and open in a gesture of parley, eyes wide, head tilted back, as he takes in Jegudiel’s terrifying countenance so far above his.

‘Who are you?’ Jegudiel roars. ‘ Speak .’ And the whip in his right hand twitches.

I place my small, human-sized hand upon Jegudiel’s side, but he does not turn to acknowledge me, just continues staring at Ryan as if he would turn him to stone with his eyes.

‘Brother,’ I say quietly, ‘he’s with me.’

Jegudiel’s head whips around, his dark gold hair momentarily tangling in the feathers of his wings, and stares at me in disbelief.

I step out of the water and around Selaphiel’s still form sprawled across the stone. I grasp one of Ryan’s hands in mine. ‘He’s with me,’ I say again, my voice stronger. ‘His name is Ryan, and he’s a good guy. Azraeil would claim him in a heartbeat — he’s already tried to.’

Jegudiel looks at Ryan in consternation. ‘But how could he “be” with you? He’s human .’

Ryan lifts his chin. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says defiantly, ‘I love her, we’re together, and we came to get Selaphiel out.’

Jegudiel’s eyes widen in astonishment. But then he turns and scans the cavern. ‘This is no place to talk of love . Neqael and Turael — those who enslaved us inside the rock — will soon return. We are closer to Hell than you think: they move constantly between the fiery stronghold that gives them life and all the cemeteries and bone pits of Paris. And what they find there, they use to create … monsters; daemonium enough to overwhelm all life.’ His eyes snap to me. ‘Since Selaphiel has been imprisoned here they have sent that foul legion against him for their own amusement, for sport. Time after time, his body has been broken almost beyond repair, but they “heal” him only to ready him for another contest, another indignity. They planned to pit us against each other when he was strong enough to face me. We must be gone before they return.’

Neqael: a name I haven’t heard for millennia. She, too, had loved and followed Luc, and had seemed to me — in form, at least — as lovely and as fresh, as frail, as a wildflower. She had hair like russet leaves, cornflower blue eyes and the slyest sense of humour that could cut you to the quick.

Turael was just another hanger-on, dark eyes, dark hair, a beautiful boy in a pack of beautiful boys. Easily impressed, easily swayed. A sycophant; the type I’ve never been interested in.

‘They are not as you remember them,’ Jegudiel says harshly. ‘These days, they are harder than the stone angels they create from the broken headstones of the ancient dead. They are angels of rage — and they will brutalise you without hesitation or remorse. We need to go .’

I bend and touch Selaphiel’s flawless face. His eyes are closed. He could be a beautiful youth sleeping on the ground. There’s not a mark on him, not a single wound, but the energy he gives off is terrifying and strange; and as we three stand over him, he seems to gutter, to flicker, and his wings shred and vanish before our eyes, as if he lacks the strength even to hold his own form.

Ryan gasps as Selaphiel begins to grow in brightness, increment by increment. I get a flash of the instant K’el died at Luc’s hand. How his form grew hotter, brighter, even than the sun, before his energy exploded outward, dispersing back to the universe, never to return. The same thing is happening to Selaphiel.

Jegudiel’s voice is raw with an uncharacteristic emotion. ‘I have to get him home . His body may not appear broken, but his mind, his soul … who can say?’

‘ Mercy! ’ Ryan yells suddenly, and his voice sounds so strange, so fevered, with so much terror in the word, that for a moment I think he’s begging for clemency, not calling my name. ‘The water!’ he shouts. ‘ Look at the water .’

Jegudiel and I turn to see yellowed skulls, scores of them, rising out of the burning water behind us, their eroded, fleshless faces topping a travesty of mismatched bones. Some of the skeletal figures have two legs, others four, others have whipping tentacles of bone in place of limbs, like the tails of scorpions. All of them move towards us, firelight gleaming on them, through them. The energy this army of bones gives out is utterly inhuman. It’s low level, just enough to animate, but so utterly wrong .

At the opening in the rock on the other side of the cavern, I glimpse something shining. It moves so rapidly it’s but a blur, and the energy it gives off is discordant and inhuman, too, but powerful.

‘She comes,’ Jegudiel snarls, brandishing his whip high. ‘Get them out, Mercy. That boy should never have come here. God willing, I’ll find you. Go .’

The deformed army of bones throws itself at the narrow spit of stone upon which we stand, and Jegudiel begins to scatter skulls and bony limbs in every direction with fist, with violent whip lash.

Still they come — a phantasmagoria of nightmare rising out of the lake. They are joined by more misshapen, skeletal forms that pour out of the opening on the other side of the cavern, single-mindedly entering the water and moving in our direction.

Ryan and I exchange wild-eyed looks as he grasps Selaphiel beneath the arms and I gather up the rest of him and we lurch forward, angling him awkwardly out through the narrow breach in the rock.

‘He’s a giant that weighs almost nothing,’ Ryan cries disbelievingly. ‘How’s that even possible?’

Ryan’s moving backwards and he stumbles over something and almost goes down, but somehow recovers, like a cat, like the athlete he used to be, and we follow the line of green, the line of black, the smear of luminescence, back the way we came. Selaphiel’s form grows steadily brighter beneath our hands, throwing a stark light, like daylight, onto the tunnel walls around us.

We plunge into that pit of bones that so disgusted Ryan before, and this time the bones seem alive. They grasp at our legs, seeking to drag us down. Ryan goes wild at their touch, leaping and swearing and twisting until we are back on solid ground again. There’s sweat streaming off his face and down his neck, every muscle in his tall frame poised for flight.

The passageways rise and rise, until ahead of us we see the concrete barrier with the drill hole at its base, just large enough to accommodate one man.

‘What do we do?’ Ryan almost howls. ‘We’ll never get him through there. It’s impossible.’

I seem to catch a dense plume of roiling, smoky vapour passing overhead, then another flees by. Selaphiel’s eyes suddenly flash open as the last of the smoke hits the concrete wall beside us, high above our heads, vanishing instantly. His gaze settles upon my human guise without recognition. Joy turns instantly to fear; his eyes — once such a crystalline blue — seem sunken and cloudy and racked with pain.

‘Selaphiel,’ I gasp sorrowfully.

Ryan looks down at the being in his arms, doing a double-take when he sees that Selaphiel is conscious. Selaphiel’s eyes move slowly across Ryan’s face, the way clouds will pass across the face of the sun, touching nothing, altering nothing. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t struggle.

As we set him gently down against the wall, there’s a distant rumbling sound that grows louder, moving up the corridor towards us with a low roar, like an approaching train. The stone beneath our feet begins to buck and ripple, the air filling with a choking dust, and Ryan and I are thrown to the ground.