She had to be a beast!
She would be a beast!
There was a frantic fluttering, the cold draught of rapidly moving air. Chrissy’s dash was halted halfway across the table as Jial blocked her way. Thin, trembling arms and vast, all enveloping wings wrapped securely around her.
‘No, no, Chrissy!’ Jial whispered soothingly. ‘This time, the change could be permanent! And after this, Si will need you to help him back!’
Chrissy struggled to break free, to complete her change. The transformation was too far gone: it couldn’t be halted now, surely?
She had to save Si!
‘Si’s going to die! Only I can save him!’ Chrissy screamed.
But Jial’s arms were far stronger than they looked. The wings, despite their softness, were even more immensely powerful, creating an unbreakable hold.
Beyond the soft breath of her winged cocoon, Chrissy could only hear the muted growls of pain and anger, the crunch and smack of heavy flesh against hard flesh. She could see nothing, nothing but the brilliant white of perfectly pure feathers.
‘Si will win, he will win!’ Jial comfortingly reassured her. ‘Si will win because he has to, Chrissy. Because he loves you, and has to save you!’
Chrissy shook, she sobbed. Nonetheless, she writhed less and less within Jial’s calming embrace.
The changes she’d felt taking place within her were subsiding. The flood of fear and fury was ebbing. It was all rushing back to where it had originally all come from, from a mind that was chaotically out of control and unrestrained.
‘Then you…you must call up the angels,’ she insisted. ‘Otherwise, Si will die!’
Jial wept.
‘I can’t, I can’t; there are no more angels, Chrissy. I’m the last – the last angel.’
*
Chapter 50
As Jial felt Chrissy relax, she relaxed too.
Her arms loosened their tight grip. Her wings began to gradually open up. Silently, they were pulling back from their complete envelopment of Chrissy, as if releasing her from some glistening cocoon of ice and silk.
Through a curiously inappropriate state of total calm, Chrissy watched as the three beasts battled. She was no longer capable of telling which was Si and which were his assailants.
It should have been possible, of course, to differentiate the one being attacked from his attackers; but the movement was swift and impossible to accurately follow. The brutality and mercilessness of the blows from all three was equally horrifying.
There was an elaborate series of flowing, intertwining moves, accompanied with kicks of heavily muscled legs and slashes of deadly talons. There was a howl of outraged surprise as one of the beasts found himself being abruptly hoisted high on the back of the shoulders of another, furiously charging beast.
The charging beast kept his opponent locked there in an unyielding grasp. He carried his captive with him as he hurtled towards the window’s shattered boarding, as if preparing to fling him completely clear of the house. At the last second, however, the running beast nimbly sidestepped. He cruelly threw his helpless victim hard against the spiked shards of the steel shutter.
With a queasy slurp of tearing flesh and muscle, the crack of splintering bone, the shards sliced effortlessly through the beast’s body. They projected from the chest as bloodied, innard-strewn gargoyles.
The beast shrieked in surprise and agony. It writhed frantically on the impaling shards, as if still hoping to break free.
Chrissy also wanted to scream, fearing that this might be Si she was watching so agonisingly die. In her strange state of unnatural calm, however, all she could manage was a sorrowful moan.
Even the other two beasts appeared briefly stunned by the awful and imminent death of the pinioned chiasmus. They watched in silence, with bizarrely little sense of satisfaction.
The beast’s pained thrashing became weaker. With a final shudder, a last tormented whimper, it abruptly went limp. It hung from the skewering shards like a discarded Halloween costume.
Chrissy sobbed. It had to be Si, the way the other beasts were simply watching him die, rather than continuing their fight.
Jial hugged her reassuringly once more. Her wings trembled, yet remained pulled a little aside.
‘Wait, wait,’ she said calmingly.
The impaled beast began to move again. This time, though, it was a quivering of flesh and fur.
The body was shrinking, changing.
Within a few seconds, it wasn’t a massive beast speared on the shards but a naked, blood soaked girl. A girl Chrissy recognised. A girl from the lower years at school who had regularly won commendations for her English essays.
Chrissy sobbed once more. She wished she could do more, wondered why she was so incapable of showing more distress over the death of this poor girl.
Jial held on to her, keeping her calm, keeping her emotions in check.
Both beasts looked their way. They growled, the lips of both of them creasing in a threatening snarl.
Even now it was impossible to tell which of the beasts was Si. Even now, Chrissy felt a shudder of doubt that this bestial Si would be able to hold back from attacking her.
She should feel fear, she realised. But there was no sense of fear within her. There was only relief that Si, even if he was still a beast, was still alive.
One of the beasts turned away, its attention focusing instead on the pinioned girl. It drew closer, giving the impression that it was about to caress the naked body, to mourn the girl’s death.
Instead, with a disgusted growl, it slipped through the hole in the shattered boarding.
The remaining beast continued to look Chrissy’s way. Its eyes were bulbous, bloodshot. They were full of hate, fury, confusion, a mingling of the most terrible emotions broiling away beneath its unforgiving glare.
‘He needs you now,’ Jial whispered in Chrissy’s ear. ‘Don’t be sacred.’
She unhurriedly parted from Chrissy.
Chrissy stepped down from the table, approaching Si with her arms held wide.
‘Si, it’s me,’ she said, wondering if this was the right thing to say, wondering what she could say.
Si stared back at her, crocking his head in the manner of a curious, uncertain animal, never letting his eyes wander from her.
He seemed unsure about everything that was happening around him. As if, once again animal-like, he was wondering whether to edge back or to attack.
‘He’s fighting to remember who he really is,’ Jial explained. ‘Seeing you, someone he recognises and loves, might be his only hope of remembering.’
‘Si, you need to come back to me,’ Chrissy pleaded, keeping her eyes locked on his as she drew closer and closer.
She was nervous, doubtful; emotions that grew as she stepped farther from Jial and closer to Si.
Si softly howled, a cry of confusion. Then he growled, snarled; and reached out towards Chrissy with his long, powerful arms.
*
Chapter 51
Chrissy stepped back in horror.
Si stumbled, brought back his outstretched arms. He stared curiously at his arms, as if he couldn’t quite believe that these were his arms, that they had been reaching out to slash this girl he faintly recognised.
He growled again, but this time in anguish. He threw his arms about his own upper torso, wrestling with himself, desperately trying to wrest back control of his own body, a tortured physical response to the mental struggle.
As if it were all ultimately too much for him, he jerked and shivered violently, finally collapsing to the floor. As with the girl only moments earlier, his flesh trembled, rapidly contracted, the fur retracting as if it were poisoned, shrivelling weeds.
A naked, bloodied and dazed Si was left quivering with cold and shock on the floor.
Whirling around, Chrissy grabbed the white tablecloth gracing the dining table. She jerked it free without any care of the ornaments, sending them and the lamp spinning acr
oss the top or crashing to the floor.
Rushing towards the shivering and still confused Si, she wrapped the tablecloth about him. Crouching down beside him, she held him close, held him as tightly as she could.
‘You saved us, Si! You changed into a beast, but you saved us!’
Jial joined her, throwing her own arms around Si, bringing her wings about them all to create extra warmth and comfort.
Si appeared bemused by it all, his eyes glazed with tears, his body trembling like a man suffering aftershock. He smiled weakly, however. It was a sign, perhaps, that he was beginning to gather his thoughts together once more, to gradually recognise the meaning behind Chrissy’s otherwise strange comments.
Jial smiled back, only to have to raise a hand to her mouth as she tried to hold back a short, rasping cough.
‘Sorry,’ she said with a muted chuckle. ‘Even angels can be overcome by the emotion of it all.’
Chrissy stared at her doubtfully. Jial had coughed before, then as now trying to hide it. Jial smiled, but avoided Chrissy’s questioning gaze.
‘Love can be such a strange thing,’ she said as if by way of explanation for her behaviour. ‘It can cause far more torment than joy, especially if things go wrong between you. We thought it best to protect you from something so distressful it could be dangerous to you. But…we may have got it wrong.’
She stood up, once again attempting to hide a slight grimace of pain, as well as seemingly refraining from clutching her side. Now while she talked she began to swiftly sway her arms before her as if moving invisible objects from one area to another.
‘But it was your love for each other that helped you retain some idea of whom you really are, even while in a bestial chiasmus state, and become human again. Emma, too, seems to have regained some form of control, thanks to the love she felt for her parents.’
Chrissy followed Jial’s fleeting glance towards Emma. Virtually forgotten during the clash between the beasts, Emma had recovered enough to stand and silently approach them. Although no longer unconscious, she still exhibited the same, peculiar dream-like behaviour she’d adopted before the attack. It was as if she preferred this state of semi-stupor to facing the horrors of reality.
‘Forgive me,’ Jial said, returning to her task. ‘I hope I’m not playing God here.’
Her flowing, elegant moves reminded Chrissy of someone diligently working at a curving console. There was a wave that could be the moving of one piece of information from one suspended glass computer screen to another. The flickering of fingers that could be the keying in of numbers or extra words. The withdrawing and punching forward of arms that mimed the action of pulling memory sticks free and reinserting them elsewhere.
Suddenly, Jial jumped as if distracted by something way off to her right.
‘No, no; God wouldn’t be terrified like this, would he?’ she laughed, seemingly at the foolishness of her own nervousness.
‘Why isn’t God doing anything about this?’ Chrissy asked.
‘I’ve asked myself that very question so many times,’ Jial replied with a bitter laugh. She seemed more focused on her task than answering Chrissy’s questions. ‘And so now it seems it’s been left to me to make what I hope are pretty radical changes.’
‘You’re allowed to make all these changes?’
Like Emma before him, Si had now recovered enough to listen into the conversation. He sat up on the floor, pulling the table cloth tighter about him. Even so, he still obviously appreciated Chrissy’s tight, comforting embrace.
‘Promotions have been quite rapid around here recently.’ Jial’s morbid guffaw was wracked by a spluttering cough. ‘Besides, they don’t just chose anyone to be an angel, you know!’
She flicked a few more invisible keys. She reached high up, pulling out another unseen disc that had to be reinserted into another, lower slot.
‘Jial, you’ve been injured–’
Realising that Si was now swiftly recovering his strength, Chrissy stepped over towards an increasingly pained looking Jial. Jial sidestepped Chrissy’s thoughtful approach, shook her head.
‘I have to work quickly, Chrissy. I don’t have much time.’
She grimaced anxiously as she glanced over to her right once more.
‘You don’t have much time? You are badly injured Jial.’
For once, Jial admitted with a nod that, Yes, she was hurt.
‘I’m almost done! I’m hoping this lessens the effect, and I’ve been able to make particular changes to your chip, Chrissy–’
‘Chip? Did I hear you say “chip”? As in computer chip?’
Urgently rising to his feet, Si swung the tablecloth about himself like a toga. He purposefully strode towards Jial and Chrissy.
Jial’s face wrinkled in embarrassment, as if caught out revealing something earlier than she’d intended. She didn’t refrain from continuing with her increasingly hurried tasks, however, answering Si’s query in a bland, matter-of-fact tone.
‘Everyone in Hermon has a chip inserted within their brains. It helps us keep track of your emotional state, even affect it some time with the odd, helpful pulse. Your parents need it too, of course; they’re under amazing pressure, raising a child they know could turn on them at any moment and effortlessly kill them.’
‘And let me guess,’ Chrissy said, ‘it’s this innocent little chip that fries our brains, right?’
‘Right. Taking into account that certain parts of a chiasmus’s chip erode over time.’
Once again Jial answered unemotionally, as if this were now the time for hard truths.
‘But that’s also why, of course, angels have less and less effect over them.’
Dropping her arms loosely by her side, and breaking off at last from whatever changes she was making, Jial turned to face Chrissy and Si.
‘You see, my real name is Elly, Elly Rood. I’m fourteen years old, and I’m from Aylesbury, in England.’
*
Chapter 52
Unsure how to react, Chrissy and Si could only look to each other with identical frowns; was Jial joking?
Was she really saying she wasn’t really an angel?
How could that be possible? Everyone knew angels were just a natural, wonderful part of life.
Even Emma managed to appear more bewildered than ever.
‘Jial, of course you’re an angel,’ Chrissy insisted, indicating the incredible expanse of Jial’s wings with a curving wave of a hand. ‘You have wings! You can fly. You can vanish, then later reappear miles away! You never sleep, never eat, never–’
She stopped. She was about to say ‘never get injured’. Because, in all the long time Chrissy had known Jial, she had never known her suffer pain or injury, until what could only be the last few hours.
‘You’ve heard of holograms? Virtual reality suits?’
Jial fluttered her wings, drawing attention to them as if it were quite obvious that such a magnificent feature could easily be created by computers and pixel generation.
‘Sure,’ Si agreed with a disbelieving smirk, ‘but nothing so sophisticated it could conjure up an angel that regularly talks to us, moves things around us–’
‘And cries,’ Chrissy interrupted hopefully. ‘I’ve seen you cry, even helped dry your tears, Jial. No hologram can do that!’
‘You forget the world outside Hermon is more advanced than you could imagine. The implant in your brain can fool you into thinking just about anything. It also relays to us any senses you’re experiencing. It even sends out energy pulses, making minor movements within your world.’
‘So…Elly,’ Chrissy said uncertainly, ‘how much of what we’re seeing is really you? Do you look like Jial? Minus the wings, of course.’
‘Huh, I wish! It would be nice just to have completely spot free skin, for a start. Jial’s based more on Jenny, who is – sorry, was – very, very pretty.’
Chrissy and Si frowned in confusion. Jial answered the question she presumed they were about
to ask next.
‘See, there were three of us, including Becky, who took turns being Jial. That way, there was always someone to watch over you. Now, there’s just me. And I am tired, and I am hungry.’
Her head jerked to the right, her eyes bulbous with fright.
‘They’ve broken in again,’ she announced fearfully, returning once more to hastily moving around invisible discs or memory sticks. ‘I’ve almost finished!’
‘Jial, what’s happening there?’
Chrissy was frantic, wishing she could see what was troubling Jial.
‘Chiasmus; they’ve regularly broken in here. We all vowed to stay at our stations. We think Hermon–’
She halted, carefully considering her words.
‘Hermon’s possibly the last place were humans can continue to hold out.’
‘The last humans?’ Si glowered. ‘But you mean our parents – not us.’
It wasn’t a question. It was a blunt statement.
‘I’m hoping my changes will give you a chan – arrggghh!’
Violently jerked backwards, Jial was lifted off her feet. She flew across the room as if struck by an otherwise imperceptible tornado.
‘Jial, run Jial!’ Chrissy screamed.
Jial sprung back to her feet. She dashed back to where she had been standing, raising her hand, reaching for some unseen object.
‘Just one more swit–’
She was brutally struck once more. Her hand came down hard against her body as she was flung back across the room.
‘Jial, Jial,’ Chrissy wailed, dashing over to her side.
Jial’s eyes didn’t seem to see her. They were directed at something drawing near.
‘It’s best you don’t see this. Love you Chris–’
Then she vanished.
*
Chapter 53
‘Jial, Jial! No, no!’
Chrissy reached out into the empty space before her. The empty space where Jial had been lying only a split second before.