Muse by Rebecca Lim
I remember Luc’s words: ‘Then, as an act of faith — of goodwill, shall we call it — take that which is most precious to me.’ His tone is final, without emotion, as he says, ‘I permit it.’
And I remember that searing pain in my left hand, feel it now. But this time the world does not go blank and white. This time, I do not block what happened from my mind.
This time, when I relive that moment, the moment when my left hand sustained the wound that begot all wounds thereafter, my memories do not twist and shatter like glass. I live them as if that time is now, not some long ago yesterday.
My left hand was grasped so tightly in Luc’s that when he pushed me with every ounce of his indomitable strength, I was unprepared. His act of betrayal seared me forever.
He sacrificed me.
And I’d fallen through the canopy of Heaven itself, fallen through the night sky, screaming just one word.
Mercy!
All the horror of those days is mirrored in my eyes.
Luc curses as he meets some final point of resistance in my unravelling. There’s something caught in me, like a locked box, a hard knot. My name; my name is bound in there. My name is the anchor point. Raphael called it the last defence, but he did it for my protection, unwittingly creating a weapon to be used against me. None would be able to draw my name from me willingly, but what if my name were already known?
Luc doesn’t bother to unravel that last portion of my soul. It’s something useful to him, a means of control. He simply rips me free, and I feel more than see Irina’s body fall away from mine. She slumps unconscious, face down upon the runway in her lovely dress, her pretty tiara, her damaged wings.
I look down at my gleaming limbs, the glowing, sleeveless raiment that I always wear when I am myself. Stare down at my burning left hand, the flames fully visible in the poor light. Disoriented, disbelieving, betrayed twice over by the one I’d loved more than anything. Itself a heresy, surely.
I’m still small, still mortal-sized. So dazed to find myself inhabiting my own skin after all these long years, these interminable centuries, that I do not know how to shape-shift, to make myself Luc’s equal again.
‘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 sw
‘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.
I hear K’el’s voice in my head. We maintain, they destroy. That’s roughly how it works.
I grasp Ryan’s shirt in my hand and pull him around to face the south entrance. As we start to move, Luc’s voice penetrates the vast space from above. ‘I want them all.’
Suddenly, Gudrun blocks our way, a new, more deadly weapon in her hand. A long, twisted, flaming blade, guaranteed to cause maximum damage on entry and exit.
When Ryan and I pivot towards the western axis, another demon stands before us. Another to the east. Those that are not bent on subduing the archangels who still live, move forward to block our way. Some are male, some are female. All their scars burn brightly, no matter how they might shift to disguise them.
I embrace Ryan tightly, feeling all his unspoken terror in the hard muscles of his arms, his torso, through his familiar, beaten-up leather jacket.
Michael bellows again, his voice disembodied, desperate: ‘Fly, Mercy, fly.’
Then he seems to address Ryan directly. ‘Guard her, human.’ Michael’s voice sounds throughout the vast Galleria like a tolling bell. ‘Keep her safe in your human world when we cannot.’
Ryan gives me a hard shake. ‘Can you do that?’ he says urgently. ‘Fly?’
I can’t bring myself to answer him, just continue to watch, transfixed, as the reinforcements Michael has called here struggle to turn the tide of battle. Though the daemonium are roughly the equal of the elohim in number, they are extraordinarily vicious. As if they have been denied the chance to stretch their wings, to test their might, until now. One by one the elohim begin to go down. Each one singular and perfect, never to be made again.
Ryan is still shaking me insistently. ‘Mercy, can you? Can you fly? You’ve got no wings.’
‘Don’t need wings,’ I whisper. ‘But I don’t know if I can. It’s been too … long.’
I know now where my fear of heights comes from. When I recall that moment when Luc cast me out, cast me down, I feel that same terror all over again, the sensation of falling, the blinding, terrible impact. To know your enemy is to have some measure of control over that enemy — that was something Luc taught me, a long time ago. But I have no control over this fear. It seems boundless.
Luc loved me. Yet he tried to kill me. And for what? Power.
‘Take them!’ Luc screams at Gudrun as he and Michael spin towards each other, meeting with a sound like breaking waves.
‘You have to try,’ Ryan shouts, as Gudrun leaps through the air towards us, her twisted, deadly blade raised, her perfect teeth bared, a personal score to settle.
‘Try, Mercy,’ Ryan yells. ‘For us.’
Us.
Though I’m nauseous and dizzy with fear, I embrace Ryan tightly with one arm, shut my eyes and leap off the ground.
No thought, just sensation. Against gravity, against every inclination, I’m flying.
My left hand burns and burns in agony. I make the mistake of looking at it, looking down at the ground falling away from us, and have to close my eyes again and swallow.
‘Mercy, open your eyes!’ Ryan screams. ‘We’re going to hit!’
My eyes flash open to see that majestic roof inches away from our upturned faces. It’s pure reflex what I do next.
I curve my arms around to protect Ryan’s mortal form, curve his face into the side of mine, clasp him even more tightly to me. And I take the full brunt of the glass and iron ceiling of the Galleria upon my forearm, upon my shoulders, my down bent head. Glass and steel shriek and rend as we burst outward into the storm-tossed night.
The air is icy. Ryan inhales sharply, begins to cough and shudder.
I look back at the jagged hole torn in the roof of the Galleria, the fiery glow emanating from the building, and know that we have only minutes before Luc’s forces come after us.
I glance down at the roadways — like human arteries, like veins — the emergency vehicles that look like toy cars and trucks, and have to close my eyes again, dry retching. All I can think about is falling. And I do fall.
It’s a death spin. Gravity’s got hold of me again, the way it did all those years ago, and I can’t fight it. The wind’s shrieking past us.
‘Pull up!’ Ryan yells, white-hot terror in his voice. ‘Just look at me, Mercy! Look at me and you won’t fall.’
When I open my eyes, I see people on the ground, getting bigger all the time. People I’m going to take out.
Ryan forces me to look at him, turning my face with the fingers of one frozen hand as we fall and fall. All I allow myself to see is the rain beating down on him, plastering his dark hair to his head, his clothes to his body; his dark eyes holding mine. The whole world, the whole sky, reduced to his dear face. My trajectory grows flat, begins, unsteadily, to climb.
‘Okay?’ he gasps, the icy air burning his mortal lungs with every breath.
I nod, the worst of the dizziness receding. My peripheral vision starts to return again and I look further and further afield. I rise higher, unsteadily, trying to get my bearings.
The battering rain, the hurricane winds, are buffeting us from side to side. The smallest downdraught sends me spinning out of control. A particularly violent updraught causes Ryan to slide through my arms, and only the iron grip of our entwined fingers keeps us together.
‘So cold,’ Ryan murmurs as I pull him close to me again, terrified I’ll drop him; terrified of lightning strike, of air pockets, of wind currents — things no mortal should ever be subjected to at this altitude. But we need to leave Milan, to get as far away from here as possible, and this is the only way I know how.
It’s a night for ironies, I think, too sick, too petrified by what I’m doing, to properly scan the ground for landmarks. I have powers, abilities, no human being could possibly comprehend, but I can’t use even half of them. Because of Ryan.
I can’t expect him to pass through solid matter. I can’t expect him to become invisible on cue; to transport himself from place to place simply by wishing it. He was not made to counter science. He’s made of a far different stuff than I am.
I’m weak, out of shape, out of practice. We’re barely any distance at all from the Galleria as the crow flies when I see one gleaming, winged shape, then another, launch itself out of that wound in the
‘Mercy!’ Ryan gasps.
‘I see them,’ I say through gritted teeth.
There’s nowhere to go but down, and that alone is terrifying. I falter as I remember waking on that lonely hillside, broken, terrified, not understanding where I was or what had happened to me. But there’s no getting around it. We need to go down. We need to lose ourselves in the human world, because there’s no hiding up here, not when Ryan’s with me.
A crack of thunder pierces the air, swiftly followed by lightning. In its glare, I turn to see that our pursuers have diverged, and that beyond them, above the burning Galleria, the battle has taken to the skies. Archangels and their glowing nemeses wrestle, falling and rising in the air, the tide of warfare turning and turning again. The air is lit by holy fire meeting its polar opposite.
No matter how I twist and fall, soar and feint, our pursuers close in steadily, driving me back towards the Galleria and to Luc. One of them is a lethally muscular male with short, auburn curls; the other has pale yellow hair that streams out behind her, a wicked, twisted blade in one hand. I have no doubt in my mind that it is Gudrun.
Ryan’s teeth are chattering with cold, his lips have a bluish cast, and he’s like a block of stone in my arms, head bowed against me, the rain sluicing off his soaked clothing. His eyes are closed now, as if he lacks the energy to keep them open.
‘Stay with me,’ I cry, gripping him even more tightly to me so that he struggles briefly, making a small sound of protest. ‘Don’t you dare die on me, not now. Not now we’re finally together.’
‘Sanctuary,’ he mumbles, and he’s barely audible, even to me. ‘We need sanctuary.’