Rebecca Lim - Fury

The fog parts momentarily and I see that strange, three-sided structure ahead, like a house without a roof, open on one side. There’s a winged man standing before it, built along mythical lines, his back to me, wearing raiment so bright I can barely stand to look at it. He has long, dark hair spilling down his back — every strand straight, even and exactly the same — and I’m so filled with panic and shame, fear and relief, that I run towards him screaming, ‘Uri, Deo gratias . Uri.’

But then he turns, and I see that it isn’t Uriel at all. His eyes are a brilliant blue, and there’s a blazing scar across his face the size of an archangel’s handprint. He is both dazzlingly beautiful and hideously disfigured, and his name springs into my mind unbidden: Jetrel .

The instant I recognise him for who he is, I remember Uriel’s earlier words of warning: Hold your nerve. Do not shift . The advantage we gained from reaching this place on foot, unheralded, is almost gone. One last element of surprise remains to me, and I must hold fast to it.

The fog hides from Jetrel’s eyes what happens next: I find a gun in each hand; there because I need them. I raise them with shaking hands, pointing them up into Jetrel’s face, where it towers over me. I pray he does not see the single lick of blue flame that plays across the surface of each gun.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he says, and smiles with pointed teeth like the canines of wild animals.

I look behind me to see another shining, winged giant, a feral light in his wide-set grey eyes. With his prominent bones and hairless face and scalp, his vulpine teeth, his heavily muscled bare torso and blazing abdominal scar, he seems even more terrifying and otherworldly than his companion. I know he must be Shamshiel, for Uriel said that Shamshiel and Jetrel were together, but he is so changed I do not recognise him at all.

I train a gun on each of them — one to the south, one to the north along the stone roadway — and they laugh in my face.

Then they look at each other as if I’m not even here.

‘There’s nothing but condors and humans on this mountain,’ Shamshiel spits. ‘How much longer must we wait? Our company becomes increasingly restless.’ His tone turns mocking. ‘And Lord Gabriel grows difficult to control.’

‘He’s secure?’ Jetrel hisses.

‘For now. Semyaza and Astaroth, Balam, Yomyael, Beleth and Caym are holding him at the mausoleum. But their powers wane, just as yours do. We are too far from home.’ Shamshiel reaches behind himself suddenly and pulls someone forward. ‘They found this one stumbling around in the fog. So they gave him to me. Shall I give him to you? Or to her?’

I see that it’s Ryan, ashen-faced, staring at me.

I start forward, shocked, and Jetrel’s eyes narrow, catching the movement.

‘Why? Do they know each other?’ he says.

‘I saw her face in his mind. He “loves” her. He could not bear to lose her.’ Shamshiel chuckles darkly.

Jetrel smiles. ‘Then let us see whether those feelings are reciprocated. You, girl,’ he snaps, gazing with a sneer at the barrel of the gun that’s trained on him. ‘Shoot him. Do it, and we will let you live.’

His taunt tells me that they still think me human. They think they have nothing to fear from me and my human weapons.

‘ Shoot him ,’ Jetrel repeats slowly and loudly, as if I possess no more wit than a trained animal. ‘Or we will take your puny, mortal handguns and pit you one against the other.’ He laughs and turns to Shamshiel. ‘They say the female is the more deadly of the species. Let us see if that is the case. This one certainly looks it.’

Shamshiel shoves Ryan towards me until the barrel of the gun that was aimed at him is now pressed against Ryan’s forehead.

‘ Shoot him ,’ Jetrel barks from behind me. ‘Do murder.’

I turn my head and look into his brilliant eyes, the shining, disfiguring brand that is burnt across his jaw, his lips, the left side of his face.

‘ Fiat voluntas tua ,’ I murmur. Thy will be done .

Then I pull the trigger of the gun that’s still aimed at Jetrel’s head.

I see Jetrel’s eyes widen at my words, an instant before the bullet — that is no ordinary projectile — hits him between the eyes. The force of his dying bears me to the ground, sends a blast wave of heat and light into the air that is enough to light up the fog from within, like a nuclear cloud.

Let Uriel see , I think fervently. Let him be warned .

I open my eyes to find Ryan standing over me, a weird look in his dark eyes.

Bracing myself on my elbows, I say pleadingly, ‘I never would have done it, you know. I never would have shot you. It just had to look that way. I’m sorry.’

‘And now you’ll never get the chance,’ Ryan says in a voice that is strangely resonant, like steel on flint, ‘because I’m going to kill you first.’

A flaming short sword comes to life in each of his hands, as if they are an extension of his fingers, and I scramble away from him in horror, backwards across the ground. I can’t shoot him because it’s Ryan. It’s indisputably Ryan. I feel his peculiar human energy, the energy I would know anywhere, anytime. But it’s mixed up, contaminated, dominated by the energy of another.

Possession .

‘Shamshiel!’ I scream as I rise to my feet, sickened beyond belief. ‘What have you done ?’

The guns in my hands dissipate instantly into motes of light, replaced by short swords indistinguishable from those in Ryan’s hands save for the light of the flames that play across the blades. Mine blaze from hilt to tip with the clean, pale blue of holy fire, but not his. His blaze with a tainted light.

It is too awful to contemplate what Ryan must be going through right now. For it’s Shamshiel’s laughter coming from Ryan’s mouth, the mad light of Shamshiel’s eyes in Ryan’s own. I shudder as we circle each other, weapons raised. Truly, I am facing a monster.

‘Who are you?’ Shamshiel growls through Ryan’s mouth, crouching lower in a fighting stance, rolling his shoulders, his blades testing the air in intricate patterns that flow and shift into each other. ‘One of the malakhim ? The double-dealer they speak of? If you are she, lay your weapons down, sister, and let me embrace you.’

He licks his lips in a manner so dreadful, so lascivious, so unlike Ryan, that I have to look away for a moment, sickened.

‘I’m just a girl,’ I say grimly, looking back into his mad eyes, testing the air with my blades in broken figures of eight. The short swords, Shamshiel’s weapons of choice, feel unfamiliar and unwieldy in my hands.

‘Then have at me, girl ,’ he roars, ‘and let me see what you are made of.’

He lunges forward with astonishing, inhuman speed, coming at me so quickly that the tip of the blade in his right hand slices through the front of my jacket, actually nicking the surface of it, of me, before I can leap back. The wound stings like acid burn.

Shamshiel keeps pressing forward in Ryan’s body, swinging his blades at me in wide arcs, in hypnotic patterns, like a reaper’s scythe. In panic, running on instinct, I throw up block after block. Our blades come together with the crack of lightning strikes, and I’m barely able to parry his fluid, two-handed fighting style.

I’m unable to truly attack or land a blow, because although it’s Shamshiel I feel in every chop, down stroke and numbing engagement, it’s Ryan I’m seeing, Ryan’s body that will bleed if I harm it.

How do I do this? I think, panicked. There’s no way to do this without hurting Ryan, or being hurt.