The Fury (33 page)

They were coming from the pavilion – muffled screams that were somehow louder than the deafening chaos that had just faded. Daisy clung on to Cal’s arm, her head a constantly churning madness of ice cubes.

‘Who is that?’ said Cal as another shriek tore through the air. Even the birds had stopped singing, as if they were afraid of what was to come.

The scream was nothing like the ones in the movies, it was desperate and broken and insane and weak and strong all at the same time. It made the inside of Daisy’s skull tickle, the blood in her ears roaring like there was an ocean flowing through them. Adam was crying into her chest, his skinny arms locked around her. Cal swore, running his hands through his hair. Chris was beside them, ghost-like. Neither of them knew what to do.

‘Wait here,’ Cal said to him. ‘Make sure they’re safe.’

‘No, man, we should stick together,’ Chris said. ‘If it’s the ferals, we shouldn’t split up.’

Cal nodded, prying Daisy loose.

‘Okay, stay with me, yeah? Stay close, and keep hold of Adam.’ He looked at Chris. ‘Grab a weapon, mate, we might need them.’

Both the boys scrabbled in the rubble, picking up metal poles of different lengths. Cal tucked his beneath his arm, taking Daisy’s hand and leading her towards the pavilion just as another awful screech pierced the walls. They ran past the locked main entrance, almost bumping into Jade as they tore round the corner.

‘You okay?’ Cal asked her. ‘You screaming?’

She shook her head, turning her wide eyes to the fire door. Daisy heard a scuffling of feet, then Brick appeared from the other direction. He was holding Marcus by the scruff of the neck and he looked angrier than Daisy had ever seen him. They marched down the side of the pavilion, Brick giving Marcus a shove. The younger kid fell, sprawling in the dirt.

‘That’s Rilke,’ Brick said. The screams were louder here, squeezed from the fire door as if they were trying to escape whatever was inside. An ice cube clinked to the top of the pile: the restaurant, and a shape that moved inside it – bright and dark at the same time.
Don’t go in, please don’t go in
.

‘What’s happening in there?’ Jade asked.

‘Whatever it is,’ Brick said, ‘I hope she’s screaming in pain.’

Marcus was on his feet again.

‘It started when the electricity came on,’ he said. ‘Sorry, by the way. I didn’t think all that would happen.’

‘We should—’ Cal had to stop as more screams tore the air in two. ‘Come on.’

‘You serious?’ Brick asked, moving in front of the fire door. ‘Let her suffer.’

‘We don’t know what it is,’ Cal said, toe to toe with the taller boy. ‘For all we know it could be another one of us in there, someone who wandered in when we were out front. Rilke might be doing something to
them
. You think about that?’

Brick obviously hadn’t, because after chewing on it for a second he stood to one side.

‘We might even be able to grab some food while we’re up there,’ Cal went on. ‘If she’s distracted.’

He looked at Chris, nodding. Chris nodded back, his metal bar raised, then the two of them ducked into the darkness. Brick cursed, following them in on his hands and knees. Daisy looked down at Adam. He was shaking his head, still crying.

‘Don’t be scared,’ she said. ‘We’re safer if we’re all together. They’ll look after us.’

He resisted for a second, then let her lead him to the door. She crouched down, squeezing through the gap. After the blazing sunlight the corridor was extraordinarily dark. She couldn’t breathe under the weight of the shadows, but when she turned to try and escape Adam was in the way, Jade already pushing through from outside.

A shriek echoed down the corridor, so much louder now, so much more real. Daisy opened her mouth, a scream of her own rising fast, cut off when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘Come on,’ said Cal. ‘Stay with me.’

They huddled together as they passed through the dust-thick light of the foyer and up the stairs. The restaurant was in sight when the next scream cannoned out, the doors rocking in their frames with the force of it, flakes of ice spiralling to the frozen floor.

‘What the . . .’ said Brick. ‘We should get out.’

While we still can
. Daisy realised they were all thinking it. There was a crunch from inside Waves.
Something
big slammed into the other side of the wall, a huge crack splitting the plasterwork and making them all stagger back – Marcus almost tumbling down the stairs. A cry, howled out with heart-breaking strength:

‘
Schiller!
’

‘Whatever’s happening, she deserves it,’ said Brick, retreating. ‘She can go to hell for all I care.’

Crunch. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Rilke called out her brother’s name again.

‘Ah screw this,’ Cal said, taking a step back. Daisy thought he was going to leave, but he was just getting a run-up. He threw himself at the doors, yelling as he kicked out. The wood splintered but they didn’t open. He did it again, and this time they flew apart to reveal a world turned inside out.

There was light in the restaurant, a flickering glow that was definitely fire, but which was too cold and too bright for a candle. In its uncertain grip Daisy could see that the restaurant had been trashed, every single table and chair upturned, most splintered into pieces. There was barely a patch of floor that wasn’t covered in rubbish.

Rilke knelt in the middle of the room as though she were praying, her legs folded beneath her. The flames were reflected in her wide, unblinking eyes, and in the rivulets that ran down her cheeks, making her look like someone burning up from the inside. Her mouth gaped open. Without warning the scream came again – not from Rilke but from something else. It was like a needle sliding into Daisy’s brain. Adam let go of her, collapsing to his knees with his fingers in his ears, and it took all her strength not to do the same.

The source of the light was moving, fast, the shadows in the room sweeping in wide arcs. A shape flew across the restaurant, bathed in weak flames. It thumped into the far wall and dropped to the floor, struggling like a dying bird. It wouldn’t stay still, launching itself into the air again before Daisy could make any sense of it. It ploughed through an upside-down table, blasting it into splinters before flailing out of sight.

‘Rilke?’ Cal yelled into the room. ‘Get out of there!’

Her head swivelled round, staring right at them. Daisy understood that Rilke wasn’t scared. There was something else in her expression: part fear yes, but part sick, gleeful excitement too. It was utterly insane. She smiled at them, a grin that belonged in a madhouse. All the while the fire moved, chasing shadows as it hurled itself from wall to wall.

‘Rilke,’ Cal said again, his voice an empty husk.

‘Don’t you see?’ the girl called back. The shape dropped in front of her, the flames dulled now but still covering it like a flickering blue skin. It was a body, its arms wrapped around itself, its legs splayed out at unnatural angles, like they were broken. Its head was tucked into its chest, but Daisy had no difficulty working out who it was.

Schiller.

The boy arced his back, his mouth splitting open and unleashing another scream. The inferno raged, too bright to look at. He thrust himself from the ground so fast that he slammed into the ceiling. One of the panels snapped loose, crashing down beside Rilke. She didn’t even notice it, her eyes locked on her brother as he flapped upside down against the top of the room, as if gravity had suddenly been reversed.

He slid out of sight, and Daisy found herself taking a step forward. Her terror was now so extreme that she could barely feel it, it could no longer register. She felt Cal’s hand around hers, both of them walking through the door together because they had to see, they had to know what this thing was.

Schiller was rolling against the ceiling now, looking like he was trying to put out the flames which burned from his skin. That fire gave off no heat, and it didn’t spread. It did the opposite, in fact, leaving sparkling crystals of ice wherever it touched. It was sucking the warmth from everything, feeding on heat and light, devouring it. He cried out again, ripped from left to right and slammed into the far wall.

Rilke’s brother wasn’t the only shape in the flames, Daisy realised. There was something else there, faint but unmistakable. Unmistakable but impossible. Impossible but real. It stretched out from Schiller’s hunched shoulders, unfolding gracefully, longer than the boy’s whole body. It swept down with incredible force, blasting debris from the floor and propelling him across the room. Schiller screamed again, the sound cut dead as he struck the other wall, hanging there like a rock climber as that shape beat frantically.

It was a wing. A single, flaming, beautiful, terrible wing.

‘Don’t you see?’ Rilke said again, still looking at them.

The flames flickered, fading again, and Schiller collapsed to the floor. He cried out, trying to crawl towards his sister before disappearing inside another inferno, that same swan-like wing pushing from his back, hauling him into the air. Rilke laughed as she watched him go, a sound like cut glass.

‘Isn’t it obvious what we are?’ the girl went on. ‘What we’re becoming? What we’re meant to do?’

Nobody answered. How could they? Schiller flapped towards the window, tearing at the boards. Sunlight trickled in but it had no power here, cowering before the living flame. His single wing beat and he was hoisted up to the ceiling again, then slammed back to the floor with just as much force. Daisy didn’t know how he could still be alive, but he was, his face knotted into a mask of pain, of confusion, as he tried to climb to the window again.

‘You have to make a choice,’ said Rilke. ‘You have to embrace this, embrace our gift, or turn your back on it.’

She got to her feet, walking unsteadily towards the door. Her hands were held out in front of her, no gun in sight. But she was still dangerous, Daisy knew, more dangerous than ever. Her brother railed behind her, drowning in fire.

‘We are all changing,’ Rilke said. ‘We have been chosen. Look at what Schiller is becoming. It will happen to all of us, don’t you see that, Daisy?’

And Daisy
did
see it. It was suddenly clear. Marcus had been right all along, and yet he’d been so wrong too. She looked at Cal, feeling the last of the warmth drain from her, snuffed out. Rilke was telling the truth, they were all going to change.

‘The ferals, they’re not the ones who are possessed,’ Daisy said, staggering back, wanting to cry but unable to remember how. Cal reached for her but she stepped out of the way, towards the stairs. ‘They’re not the ones with the demons inside them.’

Everyone but Schiller was looking at her, waiting for her to finish, to state what they all now knew.

‘
We
are.’

Brick couldn’t take his eyes off Rilke’s burning brother.

The boy was quiet again, those blue flames simmering from every pore. He lay on the floor, his head turned up. Even his eyes had ignited, pockets of impossible light. Brick thought he would go mad if he stared into those eyes for too long, the same way you could go blind by looking right at the sun. They weren’t Schiller’s eyes, they belonged to something else – a form that Brick could almost make out in his shimmering, dancing second skin.

Daisy was right. Schiller was possessed.

‘Daisy, wait!’ Cal was yelling after the girl but she was gone, her footsteps fading. The rest of them stood there, paralysed by the cold fire from Schiller and the intensity of Rilke’s gaze. Cal turned to her, his face grey. ‘You’re mad; you’re off your goddamned head.’

But she wasn’t. What she was saying made a terrible kind of sense. Brick doubled up, feeling the world begin to come apart. Reality was like a house of cards – strip away enough of what you know and the rest of it collapses.

‘You don’t have to listen to me, Cal,’ said Rilke. She had to pause as Schiller erupted again, like somebody had flicked a gas hob from the lowest setting to the highest. The boy’s faces – both his and the one in the flames – howled together as that hideous wing punched out and launched him into another lopsided flight. ‘You just have to use your eyes. Look at what he is. Listen to your head and tell me you don’t feel it too.’

Don’t listen
, Brick ordered himself. But it was there, lodged in his brain, an inescapable truth that seared through everything else. There was something inside him the same way there was something inside Schiller, inside all of them, fighting its way to the surface. It had started with the headache, that maddening
thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump
. The noise
had
been something trying to get in, something knocking at his door. And it had succeeded. It was here.

‘I don’t know why we were chosen,’ Rilke went on, fixing her doll’s eyes on them all in turn. ‘But we were. Give it time and you’ll see.’

‘It can’t be,’ said Chris, crumpled against the banister.

The others too were shaking their heads. He could see it in their faces, though. He could see that they believed.

‘Demons aren’t real, Rilke,’ Cal said without conviction. ‘
This
isn’t real, it’s a . . . a . . .’

Schiller was clawing at the window again. He ripped away the board, hurling it across the room so hard that it impaled itself in the far wall. Sunlight streamed in, seeming to funnel around the burning shape. The effect was dizzying, making it look as though he was burning inside a pocket of darkness.

Rilke smiled.

‘These aren’t demons,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why we’re here, but it isn’t for something evil. It is for something good. Something incredible.’

‘What?’ asked Jade, her red-rimmed eyes swimming.

‘Don’t you see?’ Rilke said. ‘After everything that’s happened to you, isn’t it clear?’

Brick screwed his eyes shut, fighting the swell of emotion that churned up from his gut. He saw the people at the garage, grunting and howling and barking like mindless animals as they chased him. These were the people he had hated for so long, who had hated him. The idiotic, annoying masses who’d been making his life a misery since long before all this had started. Wasn’t it right that they should be punished?

Not Lisa, though. Not her. She hadn’t hated him.

‘Don’t fight it, Brick,’ said Rilke. ‘You know what we have to do.’

He could feel her thoughts in his own, planting a seed in the flesh of his brain. He knew what she wanted. And it felt so right, so pure. It felt more real than any other thought he’d had in his life. People were bad, people did terrible things. Humanity needed to be purged.

He recoiled at the thought, his mind fighting it. That couldn’t be right, that
wasn’t
right. Rilke had made a mistake.

‘Don’t resist it,’ she said, her whisper detonating inside his head, a shock that swept away his reason. ‘You can’t say no, Brick. It’s why we’re here, it’s what we have to do.’

He felt something warm and wet trickling from his nose, the taste of salt and copper on his tongue.

‘Don’t listen to me, listen to
them
,’ Rilke said. ‘Listen to what they’re trying to tell you.’

It
was
trying to tell him something, whatever it was that sat inside his soul. There were no words, just an instinctive feeling which burrowed upwards.
We’ve been chosen, but not for this, for something else
.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said, his voice faint and distant like a muffled recording of himself. ‘That’s not it.’

‘It
is
,’ she hissed. ‘If you don’t see it, then you’re no better than the rest of them. If you don’t understand, then you’ll
die
with the rest of them.’

Schiller screamed, the flames fading like a broken jet engine. He collapsed, his second skin flickering on and off, only the fiery sockets of his eyes still fierce.

‘What we are is a miracle,’ Rilke said. ‘What lives inside us is holy, it is right. Those of you who accept it will be saved. Those of you too blind and too scared to comprehend what is happening will perish. You have to make a choice, right now, or it will be too late.’

‘But what
is
inside us, Rilke?’ asked Jade, taking a step towards the other girl. Blood dripped from her nose, and her eyes were wide, innocent, trusting.

‘Jade,’ said Cal. ‘Rilke, let her be.’

‘I want to know,’ Jade said. ‘Don’t you? Isn’t that—’ she gestured into the restaurant but she could find no words to describe what she saw. ‘Isn’t
that
proof enough?’

Cal wiped a hand across his face, smearing away crimson tears.

‘What are they, these things inside us?’ Jade asked again.

‘You already know,’ Rilke said. ‘You all do.’

Jade smiled, like someone hypnotised. She glanced at Cal, then at Chris, and finally at Brick. He thought he could see right into her head, into the broken pieces of her mind. Then she walked into the restaurant, collapsing to her knees in the middle of the room.

‘Come on,’ yelled Cal. He grabbed Adam’s arm, dragging the boy towards the stairs. ‘Let’s go.’

Brick didn’t move. He wanted nothing more than to be outside, to be away from this madness. But still Rilke’s voice clamoured inside his skull, utterly wrong and yet utterly convincing. He looked at Schiller, bathed in flames. Was this his fate too, if he stayed? Could he really walk away from such a gift?

‘Last chance, Cal,’ said Rilke, calling down the sweeping stairs.

‘Screw you, Rilke,’ he shouted back. ‘Go to hell.’

Chris was already stumbling after him, but Marcus wasn’t moving. His face wore the same look of rapture as Jade’s.

‘Last chance, Harry,’ Rilke said to Brick, and the sound of his real name sent a surge of poisonous euphoria vomiting up his throat. He almost threw himself to his knees right there, ready to embrace her. ‘Listen to their call, make your choice.’

He took a step towards her. Marcus was moving too, laughing softly to himself as he pushed into the restaurant and knelt down before Schiller.

‘You know what they are,’ Rilke said. ‘How can you say no?’

Brick opened his mouth and let out a hoarse, desperate scream – a noise that seemed to come not from him but from the thing inside him. Then he turned, falling over himself and crawling backwards towards the stairs, tumbling down the first few before he recovered. He slid down them, never taking his eyes off Rilke. She shook her head, her expression drenched in a profound sadness.

‘How could you say no?’ she asked again, then she closed the restaurant door. He turned and ran, tearing through the foyer and down the corridor, pushing through the fire door so hard that the chains ripped out a lock of his hair.

He fell in the dirt, his whole body shivering in the blazing sun. And all the while the truth of it was a beacon inside his skull, burning with white heat, the thing inside him issuing a clarion call that he could not ignore.

No, not a
thing
. Not a ghost or a demon either.

It was an angel.