Fury (20 page)

No wonder those boys ran. I would run, too, if this were not the very place I am seeking.

Rising out of the great underground lake are two stone statues on pedestals, like funerary monuments, at least thirty feet of slowly swirling water separating them. Each figure is male and flawless, at least eight feet tall, winged and rendered from a pure white stone that captures every feather, every fold of the wearer’s sleeveless robe, as if he’d been caught mid-movement. The figures are half-turned away from each other, giving the sensation of imminent motion, of imminent flight.

The one on the left has long, waving hair about his shoulders; a steely, forbidding expression. Inscribed upon the pedestal on which he stands are the words:
In flagella paratus sum
.
I am ready for the scourge
. The stone angel grasps a triple-thonged whip in one long-fingered hand, and I recognise it immediately. It was always his weapon of choice. None could wield it like he could.

‘Jegudiel,’ I whisper aloud, shocked.

My eyes flash across to the other winged being in dawning horror, and I see that he holds an open book in one hand; an orb shaped like a globe, or a planet, in the other. His eyes, his face, are lost in thought, beneath a head of shoulder-length curly hair. In life it would be sandy-coloured. A coronet of stylised stars rings his brow.

‘Selaphiel,’ I murmur, appalled.

The inscription on his pedestal reads, simply:
Bellator Deus
.
Warrior of God
.

The words are in bad taste. A taunt. For Selaphiel has no warrior side, it is not his
métier
. He is only contemplation and quietude, as mysterious as the universe he meditates upon.

The footage of Uriel drifting across the surface of an icy Scottish loch suddenly flashes into my mind. Jegudiel somehow located Selaphiel when Uriel could not, but something went terribly wrong. Jegudiel never made it to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan that night because he was trapped here; taken while he was trying to free Selaphiel. They are caged within these stone effigies, I would wager my life on it. Beings of energy, of light, weightless and airy, cast into blocks of heavy, lumpen stone. What I am looking at is a deliberate and calculated provocation, an insult.

‘How …’ Ryan begins, but I place my hands on his shoulders, pleading with him in a low voice to wait.

I move forward into the strange lake. Immediately, the water around me bursts into flames, which ignite the entire surface of the lake with a roar. I understand immediately what these flames are for — a special effect to keep out the mortal, the unwary, who might think to enter this chamber in which celestial beings are held captive in plain sight.

I turn and look back at Ryan, his skin lit by a weird red glow, his eyes showing his helplessness.

‘Be careful,’ he mouths. ‘I love you.’

I nod to show that I’ve heard, give him a crooked smile.

I turn back and study the stone angels, their faces averted as if each can’t bear the sight of the other. The smokeless flames lick at my boot-clad ankles, my denim-clad legs, but I do not burn. Oh, the flames are hot enough. But my own energy these days is equal to them, and they trouble me not at all.

I move forward through flaming water that is soon up to my waist, feeling the broken bones of a multitude of human dead shifting underfoot. Though there is demonsign aplenty, there are no demons in evidence. And I wonder at it, whether this is some elaborate trap. But nothing comes screaming at me from out of the darkness above or the waters below.

I cover the last few feet to the statue of Jegudiel at a stumbling run, and place my hand upon the stone that looks so cold. But it is warm beneath my fingers, and that warmth tells me all I need to know: that a being of fire is indeed bound within the rock.

I leap up onto the pedestal, and it’s reflex what I do next. I plunge my hand through the surface of the stone, feel my own energy run in and through the hard, crystalline structure, seeking some thread, some flaw, some sign. Though Jegudiel himself eludes me, I can somehow read the signature, the pattern of him, within the rock. For his hand once wrote upon my soul the way I now seek his, and I will always recognise him now.

‘Where are you?’ I growl, half-merged with the stone, almost feeling something then losing it again.

Something seems to shift inside the rock. I feel him coiled there, like a serpent, and then the serpent begins to
move
. But something continues to hold him there, and I’m too afraid to give myself over to the stone completely in case I, too, am lost.

In frustration, in a voice with a ringing, steely edge to it, like a tolling bell, I cry out, ‘
Libera eum!
’
Free him!

A vast, cracking sound echoes across the underground lake. The stone statue blows apart, into splinters, the mocking inscription instantly obliterated. I fall back into the water, shielding my face automatically, as a mist rapidly gathers in the place where the statue once stood, forming into the towering, glowing figure of a winged man that crumples forward silently.

He hits the flaming surface of the water and goes under, and I can’t find him with my hands, though I search and stumble, crying out his name, throwing up a glittering spray all about me that reflects the firelight. Underfoot, the bones slide and tumble and tangle.

‘Mercy!’ Ryan screams, and I hear the awe in his voice. ‘Over there.’

I turn and follow the line of his pointing finger and see Jegudiel staggering out of the water at the feet of the other stone angel, the one that wears the cosmos as his coronet. Flaming water sheets down off Jegudiel’s powerful figure, cascading down through the folds of his bright and luminous robes, his wings. I see that some of their end feathers are bent and broken and trailing.

He plunges his hand into the stone angel before him and roars out, as I did, ‘
Libera eum!
’

The second statue flies apart, raining fragments of stone across the blazing lake surface.

It seems an age before Selaphiel’s palely glowing figure coalesces and grows recognisable. Like Jegudiel, he falls forward and hits the flaming waters of the lake, going under. But he does not rise again.

Jegudiel spins, throwing up a desperate flurry of spray, his eyes seeking to penetrate the oily, burning water that swirls and shifts with some unseen current. As he looks up, he meets my eyes, and I see shock flare in his. The flames reflect on their dark surfaces so that it seems, for a moment, that he is on fire from within. A whip appears in his hand and he gathers himself like a lion, then surges towards me with a fearsome war cry loud enough to shake the cavern, intent on striking me down.

He believes me human
, I think in wonder, in terror.
Or demon. My disguise must be absolute. He does not know who I am
.

Jegudiel has already half-covered the distance towards me, his whip raised high, before I relax the control I’ve fought so hard to maintain. I let my outline ripple, let it blur, so that he sees
me
before I reassume my human guise like a cloak.

He stops dead the instant he catches the shift, then the shift back, and his weapon is suddenly gone from his grasp.

‘Find him!’ he pleads. ‘He’s almost past help, Mercy. This could end him.’

Immediately, both Jegudiel and I dive beneath the surface of the burning water and I feel his trailing wing feathers brush across my face as we spear through the airless, roaring depths, seeking our fallen brother. There’s nothing but darkness and filth and noise below, bones a foot deep in every direction, everything washed red by fire.

I surface, surging upright to see Ryan lunging through the flames at the lake’s edge as he drags the gleaming figure of a slack-limbed giant, wings bedraggled, up onto dry land.

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.

‘The stone!’ I cry in horror, feeling it shift and protest beneath my fingers. ‘It’s coming down behind us!’

Selaphiel burns now with an almost blinding light. I push up off the tunnel floor and crouch before him, placing my hands upon his face to make him see me, for an instant, the way Jegudiel had. As he catches the shift, the shift back, his blue eyes widen, his mouth parting as if he would speak. But no words come.

‘There’s a way out!’ I shout over the sound of rending stone, pointing at the concrete seal across the passageway. ‘It’s close, and this human, Ryan, will help you reach the surface, reach the light.’ I indicate Ryan sprawled beside me on the floor, his eyes, wide, on both of us. ‘But you need to do one last thing, brother, you need to
shift
as I’ve done. Do you understand what I’m asking of you?’

In reply, Selaphiel’s eyes close and his form seems to slump and shimmer. For a moment, I think I see the surface of the rock through the outline of him.

‘
No
.
You
.
Don’t
,’ I say fiercely. ‘You don’t give up. You don’t get to. You’re too important.’

I grab him and pull him close, cradling him against me, letting him feel the terror seeping out of me: for him, for Ryan, for all of us. The sound of falling stone buries my words, but I know that Selaphiel can hear them through my skin as I speak them.

‘Don’t let it be true, Selaphiel! Don’t let it be said that I was responsible for the destruction of everyone who ever loved me.
Shift
if you want to live. It’s the only way we can help you. If that boy dies, it will be my death sentence, too.
I love him
. Please, I beg of you. Shift that we may all live.’

‘Mercy!’ Ryan cries again, torn between wanting to run and wanting to stay with me, always with me.

Selaphiel suddenly struggles feebly in my arms, pushing me away. He raises a shaking hand, like a gesture of benediction, mouths a single word I cannot catch.

Instantly, the concrete barrier tumbles into pieces, falling outward, away from us. Ryan and I act like a single organism: we don’t look at each other or even speak, we just each take one of Selaphiel’s arms and haul him off the ground at a run, fleeing before the advancing rockfall. Lumps of stone — each big enough and deadly enough to end a man’s life — erase the passageway behind us.

As we stumble forward through the choking dust, Selaphiel does what I begged him to do — he shifts so that he’s scaled along more human lines, so we’re able to hoist him higher across our shoulders and
run
. But the brilliant light he gives out keeps intensifying, until he’s so bright, he’s only discernible in a kind of numinous outline. It’s like we’re cradling a dying star between us. Ryan can barely stand to look at him.

‘What’s happening to him?’ Ryan gasps, as we reach the narrow crevice in the wall we’ve been searching for.

I don’t answer, catching a flare of light to my right. Digging my heels in, I turn my head to see what’s causing it. It’s Jegudiel in the distance down the passageway, grappling with a shining, winged female figure that can only be Neqael.

I can’t see her face, but her trailing russet hair, her wing feathers, every inch of her, gleams with that foul, grey-tainted light. The folds of her diaphanous, long-sleeved gown billow around her as they struggle. I know that the other, Turael, can’t be far behind. Demons seem to hunt in pairs, and if we leave now, Jegudiel will have to face them both alone.

‘Mercy!’ Ryan cries, indicating the rungs of the rusty ladder behind him that are mounted directly into the stone wall. ‘Move it!’

I’m still standing in the entryway, my figure blocking both Selaphiel and Ryan from sight.

‘Go.
Climb
,’ I implore Ryan, entrusting Selaphiel to him completely, trying to push them both deeper into the cleft. ‘Keep yourself alive, keep Selaphiel safe. Find Henri, do whatever it takes. Get to the plane. I’ll find you. I’m not leaving without Jegudiel. No matter how much I’ve provoked him in the past, he would do the same for me. I get that now.’

Ryan gives me a hard, searching look, his heart in his eyes.

‘It used to be all about how much
I
could take out of every situation,’ I tell him in a rush of words. ‘Individual liberty — it was always my paramount consideration, my guiding principle; Luc’s. Hers.’ I point at Neqael’s gleaming figure in the distance. ‘But I’m not alone. None of us is truly ever alone. We may feel as if we are, but our actions matter. Every single act impacts on this web of souls we form part of, and it’s a web that stretches backwards in time, forwards. I could never see that before, but now I do. It’s not ever just about you, or the person you … love above all others,’ Ryan’s eyes darken with emotion, ‘it’s about awareness and respect and gratitude. Everything in its place or it is chaos. That’s our creed — the creed of the
elohim
. I used to think it meant “know your place”, don’t get ideas above your station, and it used to infuriate me beyond measure to have that continually thrown in my face — but I was wrong. What Gabriel was trying to tell me is that liberty is important, but it has to take place in a context: of others, of a community. Evil has no community, Ryan. It feeds itself, upon itself, it considers itself above all. I have to help him,’ I finish desperately. ‘Don’t you see? It goes beyond what you and I want. It always has, and I was too blind to see that.’