Rebecca Lim - Fury

Uriel! I cry into the ether. But there’s no reply. He must be out of range, or fighting his own demons elsewhere on the mountain.

Shamshiel runs at me again, Ryan’s teeth bared, sweeping his right blade upwards at my face while he swings his left inwards at my abdomen. I’m trying so hard to avoid the blades that I don’t catch him changing the ground rules on me, holding my eyes as he pulls one foot back before sweeping my own from under me. As the back of my head hits the ground with unbelievable force, he throws himself down on me, laughing, teeth exposed and glistening.

I roll sideways frantically, my outline already shredding as I try to get away from him, to re-form elsewhere, out of reach, the way Nuriel showed me was possible in a dirty fight. But Shamshiel catches me by my outflung left wrist, pins it to the stone path with the blade of one of his weapons. The scream that is torn from my lips is awful and echoing, and the earth begins to shake again, as if it feels my pain. It’s as if my agony is bringing forth a response in the physical world.

My weapons dissipate in my hands.

I cannot hold them. Shamshiel’s blade is anchoring me here, I cannot shift away.

I look at my pinned left wrist and see my scar come to life, see that agonising fire ignite upon the skin, snake upwards from my fingers, cross the back of my hand, take hold of my wrist, my forearm, as if it is alive. As beautiful as it is corrosive.

And I see Ryan’s eyes widen as Shamshiel perceives the flames. He thinks me an exile like him, but some turncoat, some traitor to Luc’s cause. I see him trying to work out who amongst his fallen brethren carries a scar like mine. It is only seconds that he studies me, his eyes crawling across my skin inch by inch, but it feels like a lifetime.

‘Who are you?’ he rasps finally, crouched beside me. ‘Tell me your name.’

I’m shocked when Ryan begins to growl and convulse like a wounded animal, twitching uncontrollably, his facial muscles spasming and contorting, eyes rolling back in their sockets. I know what I am seeing: two sentient beings fighting for control of one body.

‘ Tell me ,’ Shamshiel screams from Ryan’s mouth as Ryan’s will and body fight him terribly.

I can feel my options narrowing. Soon there will be none that will not end in the death of one of us; I feel it like a train bearing down upon me at speed.

I beckon the beast inside Ryan towards me, weakly, as if I am mortally wounded. The demon bends until he is looking into my face, and it takes everything in my power not to turn my head away, to retch in horror. For Ryan’s human skin seethes with such violence and power that my own soul crawls with disgust.

So fast that Shamshiel does not catch the movement, I plunge my right hand into Ryan’s chest, my fingers dissolving instantly like mist.

Ryan roars in a terrible, mortal agony, twists and struggles, but I do not let him pull away. I draw him closer with every ounce of my will, searching desperately for some flaw, some thread that will lead me to where Shamshiel is anchored like a parasite, hooked in so deep that he cannot be shaken out by any means.

But Ryan is no stone angel, just a creature knit of flesh and blood and bone. His body begins to burn, and I know that I am slowly killing him.

‘Aaaaaaaah,’ he cries in agony, attacked from within and without by fire.

Then something seems to move past my questing will — quick and sinuous, like a serpent escaping — and in the instant that it touches me again, I roar in a voice like sounding brass: ‘ Ejicie eum! ’ Cast him out!

Shamshiel explodes backwards out of Ryan’s body, shrieking in rage.

I pull back from Ryan and my right hand rematerialises. I hug it to my chest, weeping tears of fire and contrition as Ryan falls to the ground beside me, clawing at his neck, his torso, trying to put out the flames that are nowhere except inside him.

He badly needs my help, but Shamshiel puts a foot on my left hand before I can reach over with my right to pull his blade out of my pinned wrist.

‘ Eloah ,’ he growls, ‘for that is what you must be, though the strangest I have ever come across. You look and behave like one of them , like a creature of clay. But only the elohim have the power to cast out demons in this manner, and Lucifer wants you all. You are to be collected like pretty butterflies and brought to him to be dealt with.’ He indicates Ryan with disgust. ‘But this one dies . I tire of the game that cost Jetrel his life; it ends now.’

Ryan gasps and shudders beside me on the ground, curled over in mortal agony, unable to talk, unable to move, his eyes wide with fear and pain.

Shamshiel’s remaining sword blazes into life in his hand and I weep harder, tears falling from my eyes like diamonds, as I beg, ‘Take me, but spare him. Leave him. Let him live.’

The demon looks into my face from his great height and hisses, ‘Die now, die later, it matters not. For soon they all die. From Panama to Mexico, Iceland to Iran, Kamchatka to Sumatra, we will remake the world, its oceans, its climate — for we move at long last. It is only the first step in what is coming, what Lucifer promised us. Soon we will be free of this wilderness, our prison. We shall etch our contempt upon its very bones, upon its face, so that God himself may see what we have written there, then quit it forever.’

Shamshiel wraps his two great hands around the hilt of his short sword and raises it above Ryan’s prone and twitching body where it lies beside me. Weeping uncontrollably, I see the great muscles of Shamshiel’s shoulders bunch, his face contort, as he readies himself to administer the killing blow, while I watch, unable to move, to do anything.

Then time seems to speed up and slow down all at once.

I see a thin line of blue fire appear like holy writing across the front of Shamshiel’s throat, see his eyes fly wide. Hear the howl of indescribable anguish that climbs and climbs into the heavens, only to be lost in a shattering roar of heat and light.

Then Shamshiel is gone; and the fog with him.

As I lie pinned to the ground by the blazing weapon of a dead monster, I see four winged giants standing above me, bathed in a light that comes solely from within.

Then I close my eyes and am lost, for a time.

It’s Ryan who pulls Shamshiel’s blade from my wrist, Ryan who shakes my shoulders and calls my name and holds me close; Ryan, whole and healed and himself again.

I breathe in the familiar warm, male, human scent of him and cannot help murmuring, ‘ Jubilate Deo .’

‘Well said,’ a familiar voice replies softly, ‘well said.’

For a disorientating moment, I open my eyes and look into my own face, my true face, not the false one I’m wearing now. Then I fathom groggily that it is Uriel who smiles down at me, in his customary form, the tail feathers of his great wings trailing upon the stone at his feet, his right hand resting upon the hilt of the great sword that cut Shamshiel down.

My eyes move slowly to the winged Titan standing beside him, also wreathed in glory, and I see that it is silver-eyed, auburn-haired Jeremiel, who says now, in a voice like exaltation, that makes me shiver to hear it, ‘Mercy, well met. It has been far too long, sister.’

Beside him stands dark-eyed, dark-haired Barachiel, whose province is lightning. It seems to play within the folds of his shining raiment, the long, sleek feathers of his luminous wings, as he growls at me the way he always used to, ‘Here’s strife.’ But today he’s smiling, and I find myself smiling back.

When I look to the last of them, I start to weep again. I can’t contain my tears: they spill down my cheeks and down through the fingers that cover my mouth in horror. For his gleaming, sleeveless raiment is rent and despoiled; his wing feathers are broken and torn; the surface of his alabaster skin is marked by signs of terrible torture, by wounds that continually bleed light into the air.