Shards (12 page)

"Where are we going?" Jess's
voice was tiny and distant, smothered by the roar as it gathered
strength

"We're going to see your
dad."

"Daddy Sean?"

"No honey. Your real dad." Her
voice cracked. "Not Sean. He's at work."

Libby's eyes drifted to the
revolver on the passenger seat. An expedient death within easy
reach. She searched the rear-view mirror; her eyes drifted between
her veiled daughter and the horizon behind.

The rumble reverberated through
her skull and rattled the windows.

Her thoughts lingered on Sean,
his gentle touch, his reassuring embrace. With tearful eyes, she
ran the car through a flashing orange traffic light, oblivious to
the chorus of car horns.

A glimmer of light beckoned
from the hill's summit.

Her chest tightened at the
sight.

She floored the accelerator,
throwing the car around plodding vehicles, mounting the curb in her
flight.

The sky ahead was cloudless.
The corona of white light that capped the hill bled into the azure
horizon. The blue sky behind her had darkened to black.

"Who's my real daddy?" Jess
asked, ignorant of the people swarming the streets and their
panic-stricken faces.

Libby closed her eyes for a
heartbeat, struggling against the weight of Jess' question. The
memories lurked behind her eyes. The painful light. Her skin afire
under his touch. The cycle of mistreatment, and finally, the
abandonment. In so many ways, Jess' true father was a pale shadow
compared to the love and support provided by Sean.

The growing roar ate the sounds
of crunched metal and screeching rubber as vehicles splayed across
the road and crashed into one another.

"Hold on, Jess."

Every fibre of Libby's being
was invested into negotiating the road ahead.

Within sight of the huge sphere
of brilliant light, a jumble of cars choked the road to a
standstill. Libby screeched to an ungainly halt, nudging into the
rear of a stranded sedan. People crawled and clambered across the
vehicles, a swarm of ants desperately fleeing a doomed colony.

The wind carried screams from
afar. Agonized screams.

Libby kicked the door open and
dived from the car. The pistol tucked into the back of her jeans
was clearly visible. She raced around to Jess, wrenched the door
wide and pulled her from the vehicle.

"Don't look, honey." She thrust
a hand over Jessica's veiled face.

Libby looked up and paused,
surveying the cityscape one last time.

The darkness swallowing the sea
had struck the coast.

The horizon was unravelling as
far as the eye could see. The spires of the city shook apart as the
darkness surged forth on an endless front.

The mounting rumble shook the
earth, reverberating through her until it threatened to shake her
apart before the darkness arrived.

A black void now existed where
once the ocean swelled. The sky too had soured to black, sucked
into the insatiable void. Strands of the city---buildings, trees,
streets, and people---broke apart, trailing long lines of chaos into
the void as an immeasurable cosmic force ripped the world asunder.
As the line of oblivion advanced, more of the physical world
unravelled like innumerable threads pulled taut.

Libby's heart tore in sympathy
as she watched the city sunder beneath the darkness. "Sean," she
whispered.

Somewhere in that swirl of
carnage, her husband was lost. The attempted phone call, an
anguished effort to warn him, was dashed by a busy signal and an
insane compulsion to get Jess away. She rued the compulsion and her
impatience. Sean was forever beyond her help and her love.

The darkness pressed on in a
relentless tide. Cries of terror merged with the roar and keening
screams as flesh and bone were ripped apart. Like the earth around
them, man and woman alike were shredded by the void as it engulfed
all.

Libby snatched Jess' hand and
yanked her up the hill. Scrambling over the jumble of vehicles
congesting the road, they struggled toward the light---and hope.

Dozens of others, from every
class and culture, merged together in their escape. The elderly,
the young, and the infirm were pushed aside, left to fend for
themselves as the crowd surged forward.

Libby and Jess were suffocated
by the throng as they battled through the maze of car wrecks and
elbows.

"You've gotta run, Jess! Run
hard!"

"I can't, Mummy. I can't
see."

Their escape slowed to a crawl.
Hundreds of people clogged the street, clambered over cars, and
poured from nearby houses. The rank odour of fear and sweat filled
their noses.

With their escape slipping
away, Libby pulled the gun free and fired into the air.

Two loud booms, piercing enough
to penetrate the encroaching rumble, rocked the crowd. On instinct,
most paused or ducked for cover. Libby bolted forward, dragging
Jess with her to the forefront of the mob.

She snatched a fevered glance
behind. The line of darkness had swallowed most of the city and was
unravelling the first suburbs of the foothills.

Few people, if any, behind her
would beat the advancing void.

The immense curtain of light
scythed across streets and houses. It loomed just a short sprint
ahead.

Knots of people ran, screamed,
and clumped together, some running from the darkness, some running
from the light. Many more stood agape, staring vacant-eyed as the
world crumbled around them. Screams, shouts, and the overwhelming
roar of oblivion echoed in Libby's ears.

A few steps ahead, a line
elderly men and women stumbled forward---delaying their escape into
the light.

The shrieks from behind
intensified. The void swallowed the hill's base, wrenching the
crowds into jigsaws of mist and pulp.

No time left. Libby checked
Jess. Her veil was slipping off.

Libby levelled the gun and
blasted away. An old couple, hand in hand, collapsed to the ground
in front of her. Others hesitated at the fallen, but continued
their frantic escape regardless.

Libby dragged Jess over the
gunned-down bodies. They scrambled clear and dived through the
radiant wall.

The terrible rumble peaked into
an all-consuming shriek, only to vanish in an instant.

Silence.

The white light plunged Libby
into blindness. The sting in her eyes contrasted with the pleasant
warmth on her skin.

Tall, intensely bright figures
loomed in her hampered vision---their cores brighter than the
brilliant white background. Libby struggled to define them as they
approached.

As her eyes adjusted to the
intensity of the light, she noticed others---scores of wandering,
lost people, perhaps even a few hundred.

The last remnant of the
city.

The last remnant of
humanity.

She fumbled for Jess. Her veil
had slipped free. Luminous spheres of light shone from her
daughter's face in place of her once enchanting green eyes. In this
sanctuary of light, her glowing eyes seemed to belong.

"It doesn't matter what you see
now or who sees you. The worst is over." Libby ran trembling
fingers through her daughter's hair. Gunshots and death played
through her mind.

Jess looked up at her but said
nothing.

An impossibly tall figure
appeared in front of them. Perhaps humanoid, parts of it merged
with the light, others shimmered into random shapes. Its core was
brighter than all else in this menagerie of light. Meeting its gaze
stung Libby's eyes.

"Sammael," Libby said.

Closing her eyes, the memory
fragments played through her mind. The visitations, the burning
inside her, the fleeting euphoria and the lingering sense of
exploitation.

Sammael declared in ultra-sonic
tones that were more understood than heard, "You have brought my
daughter."

Libby cradled Jess, unsure what
to say or do. The desperate compulsion which had summoned her here
burned away under the scrutiny of Sammael's glare.

Jess stared up at her father
with intense nova eyes, evenly meeting his alien gaze. Their eyes
locked for long seconds, burning brighter for the briefest of
moments.

Dozens of other children stood
apart from the frightened crowd. All possessed the fey lines and
glowing eyes of their fathers.

"Come," Sammael motioned.

A shimmering, multi-hued portal
appeared, framed by the formless light.

Stunned, Libby held Jess tight.
Angels ushered children through the rainbow gate.

Jess disentangled herself from
her mother's arms and drifted towards the glowing aura of her
father.

"Jess, come here, baby," Libby
said.

Her daughter looked over her
shoulder. Jess wavered, Sammael crept closer.

"Jess." Libby extended her
arms.

Sammael's eyes flared, matched
by Jess' a moment later.

Jess turned from her mother a
second time and wandered toward the portal.

Tears trickled down Libby's
face, warm and unpleasant in the light. Her despair focussed into a
ball of rage as Jess, the final shred of meaning in her life, began
to slip away.

Aware of the weight in her
trembling hand, Libby instinctively raised the gun.

"No!" she screamed, and fired
at Sammael's luminous form.

Jess stopped. All eyes turned
to face Libby. Everything stilled as she stood mute, not daring to
move or breathe.

Sammael's aura blazed an
intense white-red, imprinting flare stains on her eyes. Pain and
heat seared her fingers, forcing her to drop the gun. It fell to
the ground, the sound echoless and distant.

Libby's scream caught in her
throat, escaping as a choked sob. Her legs, hollow, numb, failed
her at the last. She collapsed to her knees.

Other people hovered around
her. Grief-stricken mothers, having lost everything, abandoned and
left to wander. Exiled by the darkness, forsaken by the light.

Jess and the other half-angels
were guided through the portal by angelic hands.

"A second time the tyrant,
Yahweh, has sought to destroy our offspring, the Nephilim," intoned
Sammael. "This unmaking of creation has proven futile."

The angel's words echoed across
the pocket of light and into the empty void beyond. "Our children
shall take up arms against the tyrant-lord and walk the fields of
Heaven once more."

* * *

About the author:

Shane Jiraiya Cummings lives in
Perth, Western Australia. He has been acknowledged as "one of
Australia's leading voices in dark fantasy", had more than sixty
short stories published in Australia, USA, and Europe, and his work
has been translated in Spanish, French, and Polish. Shane has won
two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty
other major awards including Spain's Premios Ignotus.

Shane is an Active Member of
the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the
Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing,
Shane is an editor and journalist by day and sword fighting
instructor by night.

In his youth, Shane was trained
in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young
Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him
by his sensei.

More
information on Shane (including his free fiction) can be found
online at
http://www.jiraiya.com.au
.

Interact with
Shane on Facebook (
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shane-Jiraiya-Cummings/401910315831
)
or rate and review his books on Goodreads (
http://www.goodreads.com/jiraiyac
).

#

You can find
Shane's other e-books at all good online retailers:

Novellas:

Phoenix and
the Darkness of Wolves
(Damnation Books).
ISBN: 9781615720552

Requiem for
the Burning God
. ISBN:
9780987076809

The Smoke
Dragon
. ISBN:
9780987076823

Collections:

Apocrypha
Sequence: Deviance
. ISBN:
9780987076830

Apocrypha
Sequence: Divinity
. ISBN:
9780987076847

Apocrypha
Sequence: Inferno
. ISBN:
9780987076854

Apocrypha
Sequence: Insanity
. ISBN:
9780987076861

Chapbooks:

Shards: Damned
and Burning
, illustrated by Andrew J.
McKiernan (Brimstone Press). Free download from Brimstone
Press:
http://www.brimstonepress.com.au