Fury

He and I circle the rock warily, studying it, and I tell him of what was done to Nuriel; the forms of punishment that were visited on Jegudiel and Selaphiel.

‘If he’s in there,’ I say, ‘he may be compromised. Don’t touch him until you’re sure he’s clean.’

Uriel nods grimly, then leaps lightly over the guard rope onto the upper surface of the stone. He places his right hand upon the granite, effortlessly reaching through and into it, before declaring in ringing tones, ‘Libera eum!’

Nothing. Nothing but storm cloud moving in from the northeast, and the lonely shriek of a hunting bird drifting through the valley below us.

Uriel withdraws his arm from the stone and I watch his forearm, the fingers of his hand re-form in an instant into apparent solidity.

‘I’ll take the western reaches,’ he says finally, ‘including the lower terraces. You take this side, and we’ll meet back in the middle, near that structure where the path of flagstones ended.’

Uriel — still in his human guise — takes the stairs at a run and is soon lost in the rolling fog above me.

I enter the fog with reluctance; it seems almost impenetrable, even to my eyes. It sucks and eddies around my ankles like a tide, draws its weblike tendrils across my face. Trapezoidal doorways and windows loom up in front of me without warning. All sound seems deadened in the roiling, cloudy atmosphere. I could be the only thing alive on this mountain.

Then the hallucinations start. Snatches of past lives, old demons, stalking me through the streets of the city. I hear Ezra’s husband’s voice calling her slut and whore, the dull sound of fist and open palm meeting flesh, a woman’s scream. A baby cries, the sound weak and thin, high from hunger and withdrawal, and I know that it’s Lucy’s baby. I can’t escape the crying, try to outrun it. But I lose my footing by a gaping building with walls stained red with earth or old blood, and Susannah’s mother roars at me from out of the darkness inside: ‘You ruined my life, you little bitch! I wish you’d never been born.’ But as I pick myself up clumsily, gripped in the cold fear of memory, I hear her sob, ‘Come back, come back! I didn’t mean it, oh, how could I? I’m sick, so sick.’

Her voice pursues me as I stumble past a row of houses with trapezoidal rooms, scrambling almost on all fours up the staircase beyond them only to hear Lauren say quietly, ‘I’ve been in hell. Am in hell. And now you are, too. You get used to it,’ she calls after me. ‘Used to it.’

Then I’m lurching uphill, struggling to get away from them all, heading on autopilot towards the place where I’m supposed to meet Uriel, trying to outrun memory. But my own sneering words come back at me in Lela’s gentle voice, and stop me in my tracks. ‘You’ll never get out of here alive, you know,’ I hear myself say.

And I hear a dead man reply bitterly, ‘I know, and neither will you.’

Then a single gunshot reverberates upon the peak of Machu Picchu, the sound so real and so immediate that when I’m momentarily hit by a hailstorm of sharp sensation — like needles of ice being flung in my face, hurled at my body — I almost fall to the ground, believing I’ve been shot all over again.

The fog is thick with wraiths. Another one hits the solid force of me and shreds into fragments, then another, and another. I could be standing in a hurricane of broken glass. I twist and flail, trying to shield myself. They’re like suicidal insects — the ghosts of this place — drawn to my energy, my warmth, dashing themselves against me in a wave.

The fog parts momentarily and I see that strange, three-sided structure ahead, like a house without a roof, open on one side. There’s a winged man standing before it, built along mythical lines, his back to me, wearing raiment so bright I can barely stand to look at it. He has long, dark hair spilling down his back — every strand straight, even and exactly the same — and I’m so filled with panic and shame, fear and relief, that I run towards him screaming, ‘Uri, Deo gratias. Uri.’

But then he turns, and I see that it isn’t Uriel at all. His eyes are a brilliant blue, and there’s a blazing scar across his face the size of an archangel’s handprint. He is both dazzlingly beautiful and hideously disfigured, and his name springs into my mind unbidden: Jetrel.

The instant I recognise him for who he is, I remember Uriel’s earlier words of warning: Hold your nerve. Do not shift. The advantage we gained from reaching this place on foot, unheralded, is almost gone. One last element of surprise remains to me, and I must hold fast to it.

The fog hides from Jetrel’s eyes what happens next: I find a gun in each hand; there because I need them. I raise them with shaking hands, pointing them up into Jetrel’s face, where it towers over me. I pray he does not see the single lick of blue flame that plays across the surface of each gun.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he says, and smiles with pointed teeth like the canines of wild animals.

I look behind me to see another shining, winged giant, a feral light in his wide-set grey eyes. With his prominent bones and hairless face and scalp, his vulpine teeth, his heavily muscled bare torso and blazing abdominal scar, he seems even more terrifying and otherworldly than his companion. I know he must be Shamshiel, for Uriel said that Shamshiel and Jetrel were together, but he is so changed I do not recognise him at all.

I train a gun on each of them — one to the south, one to the north along the stone roadway — and they laugh in my face.

Then they look at each other as if I’m not even here.

‘There’s nothing but condors and humans on this mountain,’ Shamshiel spits. ‘How much longer must we wait? Our company becomes increasingly restless.’ His tone turns mocking. ‘And Lord Gabriel grows difficult to control.’

‘He’s secure?’ Jetrel hisses.

‘For now. Semyaza and Astaroth, Balam, Yomyael, Beleth and Caym are holding him at the mausoleum. But their powers wane, just as yours do. We are too far from home.’ Shamshiel reaches behind himself suddenly and pulls someone forward. ‘They found this one stumbling around in the fog. So they gave him to me. Shall I give him to you? Or to her?’

I see that it’s Ryan, ashen-faced, staring at me.

I start forward, shocked, and Jetrel’s eyes narrow, catching the movement.

‘Why? Do they know each other?’ he says.

‘I saw her face in his mind. He “loves” her. He could not bear to lose her.’ Shamshiel chuckles darkly.

Jetrel smiles. ‘Then let us see whether those feelings are reciprocated. You, girl,’ he snaps, gazing with a sneer at the barrel of the gun that’s trained on him. ‘Shoot him. Do it, and we will let you live.’

His taunt tells me that they still think me human. They think they have nothing to fear from me and my human weapons.

‘Shoot him,’ Jetrel repeats slowly and loudly, as if I possess no more wit than a trained animal. ‘Or we will take your puny, mortal handguns and pit you one against the other.’ He laughs and turns to Shamshiel. ‘They say the female is the more deadly of the species. Let us see if that is the case. This one certainly looks it.’

Shamshiel shoves Ryan towards me until the barrel of the gun that was aimed at him is now pressed against Ryan’s forehead.

‘Shoot him,’ Jetrel barks from behind me. ‘Do murder.’

I turn my head and look into his brilliant eyes, the shining, disfiguring brand that is burnt across his jaw, his lips, the left side of his face.

‘Fiat voluntas tua,’ I murmur. Thy will be done.

Then I pull the trigger of the gun that’s still aimed at Jetrel’s head.

I see Jetrel’s eyes widen at my words, an instant before the bullet — that is no ordinary projectile — hits him between the eyes. The force of his dying bears me to the ground, sends a blast wave of heat and light into the air that is enough to light up the fog from within, like a nuclear cloud.

Let Uriel see, I think fervently. Let him be warned.

I open my eyes to find Ryan standing over me, a weird look in his dark eyes.

Bracing myself on my elbows, I say pleadingly, ‘I never would have done it, you know. I never would have shot you. It just had to look that way. I’m sorry.’

‘And now you’ll never get the chance,’ Ryan says in a voice that is strangely resonant, like steel on flint, ‘because I’m going to kill you first.’

A flaming short sword comes to life in each of his hands, as if they are an extension of his fingers, and I