Fury Convergence

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  She sighed, flicked over to Marley’s temporary number at her island paradise, and dialed it before she could convince herself it was better to huddle miserable and alone in the dark.

  It rang twice before Corbin answered, half-asleep. “Yeah?”

  “Hi, Corbin. It’s Branwyn. Can—” Branwyn’s voice broke, and she clenched her fist. “Can I talk to Marley, please?”

  And now he sounded wide awake. “Branwyn… Is everything —okay, okay, here you go.”

  “Bran,” came Marley’s breathy phone voice. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Marley,” Branwyn sighed. “I’ve had a really shitty day, and it just keeps getting worse.”

  “What’s going on? Where are you? I can come—”

  “No!” said Branwyn. She loved the concern, loved knowing that whatever happened, Marley was on her side. But— “No. Please don’t. I’ve got so much to track already. Stay there where it’s safe. I just wanted to… talk. Please?”

  “Of course!” Marley’s voice was warm, but Branwyn knew her best friend well enough to understand the calculations going on under the words. She knew Marley hadn’t missed one word of what she’d said, and it was so comforting she wanted to sink into it.

  Briskly, Marley said, “Do you want to tell me what happened, or hear what you’ve been missing here?”

  “Maybe the latter for a bit?” Branwyn suggested.

  “Absolutely. Actually, here’s Penny. I’m going to let her fill you in. We’ve both missed you a ton.”

  “That’s fine, too.” Penny wasn’t the warmth of a childhood security blanket, but she was poise and confidence and survival. Survival, even when she’d wanted to embrace her own destruction. Branwyn hiccuped as the other end of the line changed hands.

  Penny’s soft voice said, “Hey, Bran. It’s a good thing you called late or we probably would have missed you.”

  “That was absolutely on purpose,” Branwyn said. “Tell me what the island’s like. What am I missing?”

  Without an instant’s hesitation, Penny launched into a beautifully presented description of the tropical island: its art installations, its food, a glassblower’s studio in the village. She’d been keeping a journal again, Branwyn could tell. She listened with half an ear as she tried to wrap words around her own thoughts.

  Halfway through a description of a snorkeling trip, she blurted, “I had a fight with Rhianna, Penny.”

  Penny paused, then said, “Should I put this on speaker so Marley can talk too?”

  “Sure,” muttered Branwyn. Then, as it clicked and the sound changed, she added, “Wait, is Corbin still there?”

  “Yes,” said Corbin. Branwyn hesitated long enough that he said, “Fine, okay, I’ll leave. But Branwyn?”

  “Yeah?” she managed.

  “I’ll figure out how to kill him permanently if you need me to.”

  Branwyn put the phone on the debris heap and rested her forehead on her knees, wondering why she’d never mastered the trick of sinking into the earth as a teenager. She told herself that Corbin had access to special insights through his nephil magic, but that didn’t help at all.

  “Corbin…” said Marley.

  “Fine, I’m going. I’m gone.”

  “He’s gone,” confirmed Penny.

  “So. You were saying?” asked Marley.

  Branwyn picked up the phone again. “I had a fight with Rhianna.”

  “Oh?” said Marley encouragingly.

  “About Severin.”

  “Oh…” repeated Marley, in a different tone.

  There was a pause before Penny said, “There’s more, isn’t there.”

  “Yeah. Kind of a lot more, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s awful, but it’s just stuff. I can handle it.”

  “All right,” Marley repeated, more thoughtful than encouraging this time.

  “I screamed at her like I was still in elementary school, Marley. I think I may have stomped my foot.”

  “About… Severin?”

  “Yeah,” sighed Branwyn.

  “Did she suggest—?”

  They both knew what Rhianna was like. Branwyn cut her off quickly. “Yes.”

  Penny asked carefully, “Are you… involved with both of them right now? Or did this come out of nowhere?”

  “Something came up and I’m working on it with them. That’s all the other stuff. And it’s weird, guys. Severin has not been… normal.” She realized something. “He didn’t even get involved when I was fighting with Rhianna and he must have heard every bit of it. Oh God.”

  “Maybe he was being polite? Or smart?” Penny suggested doubtfully.

  Marley snorted. “Him? No way. Branwyn, you’re really upset. What are you more upset about: fighting with Rhianna, or… thinking about Severin?”

  Branwyn’s heart squeezed twice, and she said, “Both.”

  “Wow. No wonder you called us,” said Penny.

  Marley shushed her. “But you’re working with them on something. Okay.” She went silent for a long moment, and Branwyn wondered if she was taking notes. She always seemed to take notes.

  “All right.” Marley started up again. “Bran, I can’t help you with Severin. I know you can handle that yourself, because only you know what’s best for you. Rhianna is… harder.”

  “I don’t understand how she can be like this,” managed Branwyn, without wailing. “One minute we’re walking along and it’s just like old times and the next minute she’s making eyes at a celestial and telling me she’s going to sleep with them.”

  “Do you think she’s changed?” Marley asked.

  “Yes!” Branwyn’s own words came back to haunt her. “I don’t know. Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she’s never been who I thought she was.”

  “Ah,” said Marley, as if Branwyn had given her the key to a riddle. “All right. Branwyn, you’re on a project. Rhianna is a long-term problem; getting that project done is not. If you don’t have to be Rhianna’s sister to do it, don’t. Just be her coworker. Deal with who she is, not who you thought she was.”

  Branwyn stared at her phone unseeing. Somebody on the other end covered the speaker and a muffled argument ensued, but Branwyn hardly noticed. She was Branwyn, Action Girl, and she got things done. Yeah, she was shaken by her argument with Rhianna, and the stress of Severin’s strangeness was a pressure on her psyche as powerful as his aura. That was stuff she’d eventually have to confront.

  But her relationships with Rhianna and Severin had nothing to do with the stolen kids. They weren’t relevant to solving the problem with the faerie and the dead woman and the angel’s executioner. She had to put them aside. She could put them aside.

  Marley knew it. Maybe Branwyn’s sense of herself had been wounded by Rhianna’s accusations, but Marley believed she was sound. Marley trusted her judgement.

  And Marley, clever Marley, was saying exactly the right things. The muffled argument continued and Branwyn said, “Uh, guys?”

  Somebody uncovered the mic. Marley was speaking. “—I know, but she needs to get there on her—oh.”

  Branwyn noticed but decided not to mention it. Because even if Marley’s feelings were more complicated than she was sharing, she was, in fact, saying the right things. Marley was reminding Branwyn that Branwyn believed in herself. “Thanks.”

  “Are you feeling better?” asked Marley.

  “I’m feeling more like me. It’ll have to do.”

  “Wait a minute—” Penny began.

  “Penny, she’s—”

  “No, you hush, Marley. You made a very nice speech and now it’s my turn. Bran. When was the last time you ate? Drank? Did all the other things human bodies need to keep functioning?”

  Branwyn blinked. “Uh.” Lunch had been a long time ago, and it had been a warm afternoon full of exercise and empty of drinking water.

  “I thought so,” said Penny grimly. “You always do this. Do you have access to those things?”

  Branwyn thought about the abandoned camp
site, with its boxes of supplies. “I can probably find something…”

  “You’d better. I understand why you don’t want us there right now but if I don’t get a better report when I call again in twelve hours, I’m sending out the Marines, and then I’m calling your mother.”

  Branwyn went cold. “Don’t you dare.”

  Penny was unmoved. “Eat something.

  “Branwyn?” called Rhianna in the distance.

  “And there she is,” sighed Branwyn. “I will, Penny. Thanks.” She disconnected the call before it could get drawn out any further, and took a few breaths. Then she called back, “I’m here,” and waved the glowing face of her phone overhead.

  But she didn’t get up to go meet her sister, didn’t even turn her direction. It was weak and cowardly, but she wasn’t ready to start the conversation. As her sister scuffed towards her, she kept her head down, trying to be ready for anything.

  Something cool pressed against her neck, through her hair. “Thirsty?” asked Rhianna. The chill against her skin disappeared and a large, frosty bottle of water appeared in front of Branwyn.

  She took it and opened it and drank a third before saying, “Thanks.” Then she frowned. “Where did this come from?”

  “I made the monster and the angel go get supplies,” Rhianna said, as if it was an ordinary thing. “There’s hot food at the rose house, too. If you come now, you can eat something before Shatiel does whatever he’s planning on doing.” She glanced at the horizon, which only had an echo of crimson staining the clouds.

  “Made?” asked Branwyn suspiciously, mostly to hide her relief that Rhianna didn’t want to continue their earlier talk. But of course, Rhianna was a professional.

  “Well, I suggested it to Shatiel, because he seems nice and he does know my Advisor, and he was clearly just killing time. I told him how we’d come kind of spontaneously and how the camp supplies were old and would take a while to prepare, and we’d probably be fine but if he wasn’t doing anything, I knew my Advisor would really be happy he was looking out for me, though he’d definitely scold me for getting into this situation in the first place—and around that point, Severin came back with the water bottles and fast food bags and told me to shut up already.”

  Rhianna paused for breath and then kept going in a rush. “And then Shatiel laughed, and he disappeared and almost immediately came back with one of those emergency preparedness backpacks and handed it to me. And then Severin got this annoyed look on his face and he disappeared again and when he came back, he had your overnight bag, although I think he packed it by sweeping your entire bathroom sink into it because it was overflowing.”

  “It was mostly packed already,” said Branwyn faintly.

  “Yeah? Oh, right, they invited you to that island thing. Anyhow, I grabbed the water and left them staring at each other. Shatiel kept smiling but Severin was not. I figure if we stay away long enough, we might come back to one of those portable showers.” She gave Branwyn a hopeful look.

  “You said there was food,” said Branwyn firmly. “I need that. And I don’t want to miss whatever the angel is going to do.”

  “All right then,” said Rhianna agreeably, and walked beside her in silence back to the rose-covered ruins.

  Shatiel stood in the center of the ruins, watching their return, while Severin stalked around the perimeter of the house like a tiger in a cage. There was no camp shower. Rhianna sighed her disappointment loudly.

  “Look. They’re back. On their own. Because it’s safer here. I want to see Imani.” That was Severin. Branwyn shook her head and darted past him to the fast food bag on the faerie’s cot. French fries and a fish sandwich: not her favorite but anything would do.

  “Perhaps not safer right now, but it will be once I uncloak her,” said Shatiel. “It’s time, in any case. She’ll be less confused now that the sun has set.” He gave Branwyn, stuffing fries in her mouth, a speculative look, and she gave him a ‘get on with it’ gesture.

  In response, he lifted his head. The breeze that had never stopped making whirlwinds behind him expanded like his aura, blowing gently in every direction at once. Silent silver lightning traced lines in the clouds overhead.

  No, not in the clouds. It was much closer. The light flickered again and again in a jagged, toothed pattern. The silence became oppressive, and Branwyn opened her mouth to see if she could hear herself speak. Then the sky cracked open, and a nightmare poured out.

  It was bright instead of dark, but it was a strange brightness, the brightness of death. It was light that made everything it touched darker: withered and wounded and lost. Discordant tones echoed in the air, stealing the flavor of screams and mad laughter. The shadows of the burned town stretched across the ground. In each house, the windows had eyes and hands against the bars. The smell of blood and char assailed Branwyn. She dropped her bag of food and tried to keep down what she’d already eaten. Swallowing hard, she looked around.

  The sky was ink and the world beyond the rose house and the edge of the town vanished into the same blackness. Shatiel had said he was revealing what he’d hidden, but this felt instead as if he’d taken them into a secret place, a bubble set apart from the world.

  The rose house had a ghost shadow just like the other buildings. But in its shadow, flames flickered at the windows. “Imani,” called Shatiel.

  The random tones in the air fell silent. Then the flames flowed together, and a woman gowned in fire and carved of light rose out.

  “I feel the wind, Shatiel,” she said. Her voice was musical and vibrant. “Where is my lover? What have you done?” Her gaze wandered around the rose house, passing over Branwyn and Rhianna as if she didn’t see them. When she got to Severin, standing just outside the rose perimeter, she said, “Oh….”

  “Hello, Imani,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I was late.”

  The stench of blood grew stronger, and a burning wind whipped the flames of Imani’s ballgown into an inferno. “Sev…er…in…” she whispered. “They came for me, but you didn’t. I’ve been waiting for you ever since.”

  Imani’s flames reflected in Severin’s eyes like dying suns. “That wasn’t a good idea, little star. It looks like you’ve gotten yourself trapped.”

  “Not trapped,” breathed Imani. “Anchored. Growing.” She held out her hand to him and all the shadows leaned toward him too. “I’m so angry, Severin. You know about anger. Let me punish you.”

  His face remote, Severin said, “Another bad idea. You’ve spent too much time in the wrong company.”

  Imani hissed and the shadows lunged toward him. The black vortex around his feet sprang into spinning motion and held the shadows away. He put his hands in his pocket and leaned forward as if pressing against a barrier.

  “Stay in the rose house,” said Shatiel quietly, suddenly standing right between Branwyn and Rhianna. “You’re relatively safe here. If you step outside, she’ll make you part of her nightmare without ever realizing you exist.”

  “What happening with him?” asked Rhianna in a tiny voice. “Where are we?”

  “I’m monitoring my little brother. Don’t be afraid there.” Shatiel probably intended to be comforting, but at least for Branwyn, he failed utterly.

  The shadowy forces beating at Severin slackened, although Imani still blazed brightly. “You always say no,” she said bitterly. “Every time I conjure you. Why are you here? To taunt me more? To tell me I should have listened? I hate you. Go away and let me burn in peace.”

  “I only came here for Charlie.” Severin had scarcely said those cold words before the whole shadow town outside the rose house exploded into flame.

  “Gale! Gale! Come out, my love!” shrieked the spectre. Real lightning crackled, driving itself into the earth at the center of town and the edges of the nightmare world. A figure formed out of the sparks and walked to the rose house, head down. The tones in the air began again, and every scream and laugh and chime became words: Charlie, Gale, burn.

  “Gale! Wh
ere’s Charlie, Gale? I can’t find her. Did you burn her, too?” The ghost’s voice was a blade and Branwyn covered her ears instinctively. She couldn’t hear what Gale said, but she didn’t need to hear to understand the miserable little shrug.

  What are we supposed to do about this? she wondered. Soothe the ghost and send her off, she supposed. But ghostbusting was another sister’s job—

  That was when the clarion sound of a horn echoed in the nightmare space and once again the sky cracked open. With a rushing, jangling percussive noise, dogs and horses and riders spilled through the hole and the Wild Hunt flew to earth.

  5

  Hunt

  “And now the problem arrives,” said Shatiel in his pleasant way and walked out of the rose house to meet the Wild Hunt.

  Branwyn shook her head. The Wild Hunt had a vibrant, intense reality that made the shrieking of the ghost no more than tinny sound from a screen. The breath of the horses and the shifting of their tack was almost overwhelming in comparison.

  Branwyn’s younger sister Brynn’s voice was another splash of creek water as she said, “Branwyn? What are you doing here? And Rhianna too?”

  Branwyn had to shake her head again. She knew what Brynn had become although she tried not to think about it very much. She’d been there at the beginning, but she’d never seen Brynn in working clothes, metaphorically speaking. The superrealism was disorienting.

  …Although in this case, Brynn’s actual working clothes seemed to be her summer pajamas. All six of the riders were in some state of undress. The two young men were both shirtless in pajama bottoms; blonde ex-vampire Amber was in a short, silky nightgown, teenage AT was in a rumpled long t-shirt and unbuttoned cut-offs, and Jennifer, the eldest of the group, wasn’t wearing much more than a man’s button-down shirt.

  Amber covered a yawn as she looked around. “Wow. This is… how did we miss this?”

  Severin said in a low voice, “No fucking way this is happening.”