Rebecca Lim: Muse

‘Rally to Mercy!’ I hear Michael roar, defying the dark angels that threaten to engulf him, parrying their blades more swiftly than the human eye could follow. ‘She must not fall to Luc. Rally!’

The air is full of the sound of opposing energies colliding.

Luc holds out his hand to my small one. And, for a moment, I wonder what would happen if I simply took it.

‘Come with me,’ he says almost kindly, ‘and you shall live and prosper and be free. Nothing, none of the darkness to come, shall touch you. You shall always be untouchable in my court.’

I look up at him. ‘Though not your queen,’ I say softly. ‘Never your queen.’

He shakes his head. ‘That part of the history of us is done. It is over. But stay with me willingly, and every heart’s desire shall be yours. Even that boy.’ He gestures into the darkness behind us. ‘For you, I will let him live. Let him be your … pet. Your plaything. And when you tire of him …’ he shrugs. ‘Throw him away.’

I move forward towards Luc, almost hypnotised. His right hand is still outstretched, still open to receive mine. What he promises is so much more tempting than the fate the Eight have always had mapped out for me. Ryan. I would get to keep Ryan.

‘No!’ I hear someone roar, and K’el seems to fall out of the air to stand between Luc and me. My watcher, the one I spurned so many years ago, who loves me still, despite the torment I’ve caused him. My protector, to the last.

‘Mercy, get back!’ K’el cries. ‘The earth will no longer be enough to contain him if you submit now. Don’t you understand who he is? What he wants?’

‘He’s the Devil,’ I say simply, understanding at last, but too late. ‘He’s the one responsible for all the evil in this world, all the tribulation; who fuels the worst excesses, the darkest desires and perversions of human nature.’

‘He goes by many names,’ K’el says fiercely as he pushes me back towards the now abandoned press gallery at the far end of the catwalk, his fiery weapon all that stands between us and Luc. ‘Shaitan, Belial, the adversary — these are only some of the names he is known by. But we have ever known him as Luc, or Lucifer, the day star.’

‘The Archangel of Light.’ I laugh despairingly.

‘No more,’ Luc snarls, stalking us in long, easy strides. ‘When my brother Michael cast me down, I ceased to be elohim. The Archangel of Light is dead. And the Devil has arisen in his place.’

The air shimmers with smoke and flame and ambient heat and I scan the area around us for any sign of Ryan, but all I see littered around us are fallen bodies, overturned furniture.

We do not sense Gudrun until she leaps out of the flames beside us. K’el does not see her — so intent is he on me, on Luc — until the short, burning blade she’s holding in her hand enters his side. He looks down in surprise at the light bleeding from his pierced side in bright drifts, in errant curls of pure energy. Shock distorts his features — in some ways we are naïve, we elohim. Always imagining we are inviolate, so far above everyone and everything that nothing could ever touch us. We deal in death, yes. But rarely glimpse it ourselves, face to face.

‘K’el!’ I sob, pulling the demon’s blade free and twisting my hands into the energy of which Gudrun is made. Though she towers over me still, I swing her up and over my head before sending her flying down the length of the runway with a blast of pure energy fuelled by all the hatred, envy and rage in my body.

Before she hits the blank wall at the northern end of the building, she scatters into a billion pieces and disperses.

K’el’s still looking down at the wound in his side when Luc moves forward suddenly, grabbing him by the throat with his left hand, forcing his head up with the tip of the long, burning dagger he’s now holding in his right. Before I can speak or even raise my hand, Luc hisses, ‘And the Devil always gets what he wants,’ and cuts K’el’s throat in one smooth arc from ear to ear.

I scream as K’el’s head falls back and the light leaves his beautiful eyes. His form seems to waver, grows unbearably bright for an instant. Then, without a sound, his energy simply vanishes, dispersing, never to return.

I begin to shake. There are no words to express my horror, my grief. K’el was singular, and perfect, and no one like him will ever be made again.

Luc subsumes his weapon into the palm of his hand. ‘Time presses,’ he says caustically. ‘Take my hand willingly and live. Or die — it is all one. Your soul is mine; I’ll claim it either way.’

He holds his hand out to me, palm upward, and I stare at him blankly. Unable to move, unable to believe that he expects me to take the hand that just destroyed K’el.

He makes a snarling sound in the back of his throat and moves forward. But before he can reach out and take hold of me, I catch a fleeting movement behind him.

‘Merce, get back!’ Ryan cries, and he throws something at Luc’s back then vaults clear of the runway.

An arc of clear, strong-smelling accelerant hits Luc squarely and goes up with a roar. Flames rise at least twenty feet into the air. Luc just starts to laugh. He is truly horrifying to behold. He could douse the fire in an instant, but instead he lets it take hold of him, his whole form burning, and within that blazing outline I glimpse all those things he once showed me — cruelty, perversity, death and destruction — on such a grand scale that I scream and look away.

I see Ryan gesturing at me from the ground, from beyond the burning catwalk, telling me with his hands, his eyes, to go to him. And I shake my head at him in wordless horror, wanting him to run, to get as far away from me as possible if he wants to live. He deserves so much more than I could ever offer him. If he stays with me, he will be hunted down ruthlessly, like a dog. I know it.

Luc suddenly rises high into the air, arms outspread, still burning, still laughing, and ignites his long sword, ready for the killing blow.

‘No mercy for you,’ he roars, pointing his weapon at Ryan, at me. ‘No mercy.’

But then a light of such blinding beauty and magnitude that even Luc must cover his eyes fills the interior of the Galleria, sending a beacon through the glass-roofed dome into the troubled skies above.

‘Flee!’ I hear the Archangel Michael cry. ‘Fly.’

As he says the word, the arched roof of the Galleria seems to shimmer, then more elohim — twelve in all — drift down through the solid canopy of glass and iron in a cruciform configuration, soaring straight towards Luc.

The blinding light extinguishes and I don’t hesitate, I leap through the flames towards Ryan, moving easily, with a fierce sense of joy and purpose as if Luc’s acts of betrayal have finally freed me. And Ryan closes his arms around me tightly, resting his chin briefly atop my head so that I close my eyes at the familiar, longed for gesture. The pain in my left hand seems to burn out, though not the pain in my heart. K’el hadn’t stood a chance.

‘You feel so real,’ Ryan murmurs, looking into my eyes.

‘I am real,’ I reply. ‘And you can’t know how good this feels.’

I search his face. ‘But we have to move, Ryan. It’s not safe for us here.’

My sight is unerring though the darkness is lit only by fire now, by lightning. The Galleria looks as if an inland tsunami has swept through it, the ground strewn with chairs and video equipment, the bodies of the mortal fallen. As I look up at the knots of elohim and daemonium struggling and grappling in the air, I see Luc swiftly put his blade through one of Michael’s reinforcements. The eloah’s energy disperses soundlessly as she dies, and another of her brethren engages Luc immediately.