Rebecca Lim: Muse

When I stand there, still transfixed with shame and fury and envy by the sight of Luc with the bombshell he replaced me with, Gabriel says more gently, ‘Soror.’ Sister. I look down at him.

‘Turn away. Cover your eyes. And when we are done and gone, get that boy safely home.’

Gabriel raises his hand and I turn to follow it, and see Ryan, his seated, frozen form, his eyes fixed on the empty air where I’d been standing only seconds before. There’s that look in his eyes. Of love. For me. Captured there for all to witness.

Horror rises up in me again. Gabriel’s right. Ryan will always be vulnerable to those of our kind who wish him harm. I need to get him out of here.

I nod to show that I’ve understood, and back away from Luc’s achingly familiar, achingly beautiful form, all my dreams of him, of home, of our secret garden, like ashes now, too.

‘That’s it?’ Luc throws back his head and laughs. ‘You think I’m afraid of you six? K’el is no substitute for the great Raphael — who was not easy to subdue, I’ll admit. He’s no substitute even for that weakling Selaphiel. As for Nuriel? We have her, and we’ll keep her for as long as we deem it necessary. She’s not particularly … comfortable, but she’s still alive. If barely.’

I see Gabriel and Uriel exchange worried glances.

Luc laughs again, and his voice has a ringing, grating edge to it that makes me want to clap my hands over my ears in pain. ‘Which means you stay exactly where you are, Mercy. You and I are nowhere near finished.’

I can’t summon any words of defiance. Truly, all I have left are feelings. While I somehow manage to find the strength to hold Luc’s gaze, I am being slowly torn apart inside, as if by wolves.

I feel Gabriel leap lightly onto the platform beside me. He places a strong hand upon my back, and from it flows the strength to defy the one whom I would have died for. Years ago, aeons.

‘We are finished,’ I tell Luc bitterly. ‘I don’t recognise you, and I don’t want to know who you’ve become. I’ve wasted enough time holding out hope that we’d be together again, the way we used to be. This is the point where I get out of the frame, at long last. You disgust me.’

I’m turning away from him, from them all, when Luc suddenly calls out my name. My true name. And I wrap my arms around my head in agony.

It’s like I’m the only still point in a spinning, screaming world, and I fall to my knees, sweating and shaking, my own name a weapon of absolute control.

As I fall forward onto the runway — deaf and blind to everything except the shattering noises in my head — the entire room comes alive around us.

It only takes seconds for people to register the eight shining beings gathered around my prone form on the catwalk, growing in stature right before our eyes, becoming giants until they tower over everyone present. Become less and less human. More and more luminous, more beautiful. Grow wings.

Then swords of pure flame ignite in their hands, crackling with energy, and the air around me begins to superheat as six move to contain two.

People begin to shriek and scramble backwards, away from us. I sit up slowly on the runway, head pounding, eyes watering.

Luc raises one hand casually and the vast space is suddenly plunged into a terrible darkness in which the only visible things are the eight beings surrounding me.

One by one the video screens go up in flames along the length of the arcade, so that those who have not already made it to the southern exit turn and flee for the east–west axis of the cross-shaped building, screaming in terror, trampling others in their desperation to flee the flames.

The darkness is lit by fire, by the screens of mobile phones, by eerie flashes of lightning from above. Around us is utter chaos; the theory of that man Darwin in motion.

‘Mercy!’ I hear Ryan shouting somewhere behind me. ‘Mercy! Where are you?’

I turn to look for him, but all the chairs have been swept aside. There are bodies everywhere, people pushing and buffeting each other. The smell of burning plastic and circuitry is intense and acrid.

‘We have no quarrel with you,’ I hear Barachiel say to Gudrun as she edges towards me, as if for safety. ‘Stand aside from him and you get to live.’

K’el, Jeremiel, Uriel and Gabriel close in around Luc’s golden, watchful form.

Michael turns his head of short, black curls in my direction, fury in his black eyes and raises his blazing blade. ‘Flee,’ he roars at me, at Gudrun. ‘You will have little stomach for what we are about to do to the one you each call your beloved.’

‘Kneel,’ he bellows at Luc, judgment in his bell-like voice. ‘Submit. There is no one left to pray to. He turned from you when you turned from Him. I should have finished you properly the first time.’

The six close their circle around Luc, intending to sacrifice him here, before us all.

Through the screams of the injured and terrified, I hear Ryan again. ‘Mercy! Mercy! Tell me you’re still here.’

I swing my head in his direction, shouting, ‘Ryan! Yes, I’m here. I’m still here. Don’t move — I’m —’

Then Luc does it again. He roars my name and I’m as good as dead. Bent double in agony, I can’t hear, can’t see, can’t speak. All because Raphael once thought it a good idea to hide the memory of my name inside me, so deep that I can’t recognise it, or bear to hear it, without going haywire.

Gudrun seizes me by the throat then, lifting my mortal form easily off the ground.

Michael frowns; the other five exchange glances. But their watchful stances never vary. They are here for Luc first and foremost.

‘Let her die,’ Michael says dismissively, turning away from Gudrun, from me. ‘At heart, she’s one of you anyway. Do your worst, demon.’

Demon? Is that what she is?

Is that what Michael and the others really think of me?

I am filled with so much rage and shock and hurt, that my clenched left fist begins to blaze in agony and I kick out, almost breaking free of Gudrun’s imprisoning hold. She digs the fingers of her right hand harder into the flesh of Irina’s throat as Michael and Luc circle around us slowly, blades raised and rippling with a pale blue luminescence.

As I struggle to get air into Irina’s lungs, to stay conscious, Michael’s black eyes clash briefly with mine before they slide away. My shock deepens when I realise that he’s doing this deliberately. He’s actually trying to provoke me, and somehow, just for a moment, I could divine his intent. Anger can be used; it can be channelled, his gaze seemed to say. There must be no surrender. The realisation only makes me struggle harder, though my eyes are failing, and my movements are growing feeble and unfocused.

Luc’s voice is amused. ‘Still haven’t worked it all out yet, my love? You didn’t used to be so slow.’

Lightning splits the sky above the Galleria again and I see Ryan gripping the edge of the catwalk about ten feet away to my left, people pushing and shoving past him like a living tide. His own eyes widen in shock when he sees Irina dangling like a doll in a bride’s dress and crumpled wings at the end of Gudrun’s arm.

The others don’t see Ryan vault up onto the runway, staying low. And I can’t warn him to keep away, not to try anything heroic, because Gudrun’s crushing my windpipe in her right hand, the nails blood red.

Flames suddenly burst up the sides of the runway and Ryan dives out of view. At the edges of my sight, I see the hysteria worsen as people are hemmed in by flames on all sides. They change direction multiple times, like a stampeding herd. People go down and stay down, lie still.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Luc says calmly, facing down the tip of Michael’s flaming broadsword without flinching. ‘My trap is sprung within yours. It has already closed around you all — most holy, most high.’ He throws his golden head back and laughs. ‘It is you who must kneel. I have a special vengeance reserved for all of you; but for you, Michael, I have something truly exceptional in mind.’