The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  ‘There you are!’ came Kohl’s infuriated shout, and I screamed out a warning when he appeared out of nowhere, grasped Constance by the hair and jerked her off the ground. ‘Dark Nephilim!’ he raged as I threw myself forward but landed facedown, burning up on the inside.

  ‘What’s your excuse?’ I heard her gasping for breath. ‘Rapist!’ she went on. ‘Double-crosser! Ungrateful little-’

  ‘You can’t rape a whore!’ Kohl screamed then, reaching into his toga, and I shrieked first in outrage, then in terror when I saw a long, thin blade emerge in his fist and come striking down at his mother’s shoulder. I didn’t see it pierce her but her eyes bulged in their sockets as blood sprayed out of her mouth, and that was it for me! I grunted, arching my back as sympathetic agony made me feel like I’d been the one ripped open.

  No!

  Yes! Hissed another voice that I knew was not mine, and suddenly I wished that the spring was full of mirrors so that I could drag Satan forth and let her end Kohl the way he had just ended his mother. But there were none so I could do nothing but boil in everything that was evil and gape as Kohl yanked the blood-covered blade out of her back while mine throbbed in sympathy. The duchess flopped facedown with another sickening crack in a pool of her own fresh blood, and I felt my heart thud one final time as I opened my mouth to scream and throw myself at her murderer. Killing her the first time had been heinous enough, but twice? No! I was dying and he was going with me, and all I could hope that Hell would be expansive enough to ensure that I never had to see him again!

  But suddenly I was bursting into flames instead and hurtling back- and away from him! For a moment I thought Kohén had finally ‘gotten’ me, but it took only a blink of shock for me to realise that like a dragon, I had just released not breath and voice- but flames!

  ‘Whaaat???!’ I thought, clinging to the wall behind me as the pressure of the release knocked me backwards, but I hadn’t the mental capacity to wonder why or how, only to scream more as everything that I had ever wanted to shout at God, the Barachiel’s and everybody else that had ever hurt or scared me poured out of me in a fireball so bright that it blinded me. Oh God!

  Flames as hot as my rage, as swift as my sudden hatred for Kohl, and as damaging as any bolt of lightning could have ever hoped to be shot out of me like a solar flare bursting forth from the sun and blasted Kohl so hard that one moment he was there and the next he was imbedded into the plaster of the wall some ten feet behind him and screaming as his hair caught on fire. The flames vanished then and I fell forward on all fours, panting as a cloud of steam gushed out of me.

  ‘Larkin!’ I heard Kohén crow from behind me, but I couldn’t do anything but stare as Kohl fell out of the wall and flopped into the water puddling beneath it, rolling and howling in agony as the flames were snuffed out. All of that would have been overwhelming enough, but no sooner had Kohl begun to simmer and moan, then I realised that my fever had broken as clearly and sharply as my water jug had that day when I’d hurled it at Satan!

  ‘Oh… oh!’ I twisted my neck and arm, gaping at it and feeling a shiver of some potent but unfamiliar emotion when I saw that although the brand was still there, the skin around it had healed perfectly, and the bulging veins had vanished, leaving my arm smooth and golden once more. I touched my face and felt that although it was still sore from where I’d been struck, wet from sweat, misted with water, slick with tears and decidedly warmer than normal human skin ought to be, it was no longer an intolerable flush emanating from my core. I stretched out my hands- fisted them then spanned my fingers before fisting them again, and though my left one still ached from where Kohl had trampled it, they no longer felt weak or exhausted- but the opposite! In fact, I felt like I could crush anything and anyone with those hands!

  I’m… I’m alive! I realised, rubbing my lips together and swallowing, amazed that although I could taste something different, I didn’t feel parched or sore- or burned at all! And my fever really was gone! One moment it had been like a dense cloud of pure humidity had been closing in on me, and the next it was like the world had fragmented and then come back together in perfect alignment, allowing a breeze to find its way to me again and revive me. ‘How?’ I whispered, and then a memory came back to me as clear as if it had happened seconds before. Of me kneeling before Eden’s fence, with my mother kneeling on the other side of it.

  ‘Oh, mother… I wish I were a Nephilim- a healer! I’d come home, I’d touch father’s heart…’

  ‘Are you sure that you’re not?’ my mother had asked. ‘You could do so much for me, if you were! Maybe you just haven’t found your power yet! They say it usually takes a severe emotional prolapse to-’

  ‘There’s nothing there!’ I’d cried. ‘I’ve know every kind of emotion there is- I have been at my lowest, and my happiest…’

  But I hadn’t. I thought I’d had, but at the age of sixteen, I’d scarcely understood the words loss, anger or pain. But I knew them now! Oh boy, did I know them after this night!

  And evidently, that brand had been my trigger, or at least, my ‘allergic’ reaction to gold had been and now I knew- there was a reason why I couldn’t feel fire’s heat until I came into contact with it, and why things grew easily from my touch in frozen earth! I couldn’t touch electricity without being shocked, or affect water the way Kohl could or heal anyone- but I could breathe fire and live, and that made me a Nephilim, all right! That made me my father’s child- the father I’d never met... and that terrified me. My head spun with thoughts that were clearer than any I’d had before, and sparkled despite the pain associated with so many of them. I’d never seen a fire breather before- if that was what I was.

  I am a dark Nephilim! That’s more than being a third-born, and more than a whore, but is it better than being either? No! They’ll kill me faster!

  ‘Lark, you’re an angel!’ a hand touched my bicep and I flinched, spun and shrieked, slapping at Kohén’s hand and then jumping when I saw five flares shooting out of my fingertips and burning an arc of clarity into the mist and smoke. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I hollered as my Indian Brave fell back onto his backside and gaped up at me, obviously terrified. I stared at my own fingertips for a moment, shocked a second time to see fire seething from them without causing me pain or deformation, and had a flash memory to the day before when they’d done the same thing. I’d thought it had been spilled kerosene that had caused them to catch alight like that when Constance had swiped the torch from my hands, but what if this fire had been trying to escape me in a panic even then? What if it had been trying to escape me my whole life, and I’d repressed it, or had allowed others to? My fevers, the way I flushed so hot whenever I was upset- the way that heat often felt like it was smothering me from within… had that been my fire just begging to be released all along? I remembered Karol and Kohén inspecting me that dreadful day- remembered the comments I’d heard then and since about how hot I was on the inside- how I burned them in way they enjoyed...and my teeth clenched together. No wonder I’d been repressing my heat! It had been one more thing that about me that they had made me feel ashamed of!

  I looked at my primary oppressor, Kohén, and sneered. He was covered in welts and deformed by them and I liked it- I wanted him to look as ugly on the inside as I knew he was within. ‘Don’t touch me ever again, don’t look at me don’t THINK of me Kohén Barachiel, because I hate you! I am NOT your angel I am-‘

  ‘An angel! You are an angel!’ Kohén pointed at me and I ducked, presuming he was about to hurl his own firepower back at me, but as I ducked I heard the rustle, and that made my heart skip a beat, to think that someone was sneaking up behind me. I twisted as he clarified: ‘Not just my angel, but an actual winged creature! Look!’

  I’d spun to see if Kohl as sneaking up on me, and I saw the blur of white as I did, and heard a more pronounced rustle. I looked up, following that white blur to several inches above my head and my lips parted in astonishment when I saw what Koh
én had- feathers as tall as I extending from behind me.

  No! How? Oh...oh, does this mean that I am good? Can it?

  ‘Oh Larkin…’ Kohén breathed. ‘You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever beheld…’

  I curled in my shoulders, scared at first, but they moved with me and fascinated now, I lifted my hand, tentatively touched the softest, purest thing I had ever seen, and shivered as pleasure raced through me.

  I am an angel! Oh… no WONDER Satan wanted me so badly! I’m not just a Nephilim, if I have wings, I could be the most powerful one left in existence!

  Panting now, I reached behind me and felt the place where the wings had sprouted from the centre of my back and understood why I’d felt pain when Constance had been stabbed…. because that was what had caused the wings to erupt from deep inside me! They felt sore around the base, but it wasn’t much more than a burn, and a burn I could cope with if it meant I could fly, right? Because if I could fly, it meant that I could fly far away from here, and never look back! Not even with… I looked at my brand then and my eyes slitted.

  On second thought… no I can’t cope with being burned… Swallowing hard as a lump of anguish formed in my throat again, I looked over at Constance’s lifeless body then and sobbed to see the pool of blood growing around her beautiful peacock dress. When we’d first met, I’d truly believed that we’d lived utterly opposite lives! That we’d never ever get to stand on common ground! But she had had wings once too- we’d both been birds, we’d both been locked in gilded cages due to our foolish hearts- and we both had suffered for it. Too in love with our chosen Barachiel’s to leave when we should have- but to adored by them to be released. And I think it’s time that Kohén understands just how excruciating being trapped by fire can feel!

  I sighed and my wings drooped. My body had begun to heal, yes but my heart… my heart was cinders. I wouldn’t be flying anywhere, unless it was to find a grater height to fall from.

  ‘Larkin… God Larkin… I knew it.’ I heard Kohén’s voice break, and the water slosh beneath him as he crawled towards me. ‘You’re not only the most beautiful creature that has ever walked the earth, but the most heavenly. And I love-’

  I hissed at him as a shudder ran through me, wiping my tears from my cheeks as I slowly pivoted to regard my captor once more. Releasing the flames and developing the wings had cooled me and had even granted me a temporary sense of elation, and yet the worst parts of my reality had not changed for those developments, and it was with an aching heart that I realised that my fate hadn’t changed either, and I didn’t desire it to. I was going to get free, yes, but I wasn’t going to live beyond that.

  I could not. Not in this world.

  Just like that, I felt the shadows that had been building over me all day fall out of the sky and crush me once more. Kohén blanched and drew back, and I thought that it was because he understood that I was about to go boil him alive until he finally understood what fear and pain meant- but then I felt that shadow descend further, looked back over my shoulder in Kohl’s direction again- and moaned when I saw that my beautiful, perfect feathers were turning black now.

  Constance was wrong, I thought. I hadn’t been born as a dark Nephilim, but I had become one within Eden’s walls. Had I ever been the bad influence? The negative energy? I didn’t supposed it mattered now. All that mattered was that I made damn sure that no innocent girl was ever treated as I had been again!

  ‘Y-your tears…’ Kohén was moving back further, and his adoring gaze was gone. ‘You’re… you’re crying…’ he looked stricken as he whispered the admission: ‘Blood. Oh… oh God! Lark-what have I done-’

  ‘The unforgivable!’ I screamed, then lifted my hand and sent a flare across the air like a meteorite, hitting the base of the chandelier above him and making it swish and, tinkle and groan. Kohén looked up at it, paling further, as the little crystal cups in it began to slosh and then burst into flame as the kerosene was ignited, just as Satan had done at his sweet sixteenth ball. ‘The unholy! The unthinkable! And there is no redemption for any of it, so burn in your love for me, Kohén Barachiel! Writhe! For it is the last heated touch you’ll ever know!’

  And then the chandelier fell from the ceiling and crashed on top of him, its heavy golden frame forming a cage around him now, and to make it clear how guilty I did not feel about it, I turned away before he’d started screaming, stabbed my delicate golden heel into Kohl’s gut as I stomped over him, and laughed when I heard their identical screams rise behind me.

  Better not let them die a slow death… I thought idly, trailing my fingers along the gold-leafed wallpaper along the corridor on my way out, and breathing in the smoke deeply as they ignited. That would just be evil!

  ‘I knew you’d be able to do it!’ a voice cried, not inside my head but from beside me as I passed a mirror. ‘I prayed that you would, but my prayers haven’t been answered for a very long-’

  I whipped the mirror off the wall and let it shatter against the floor. I didn’t need her help condemning myself or an audience- that was already done!

  Now it was time to dance with the true devil.

  28.

  I heard the banging the moment I was within a few metres of the harem entrance, and although there were long cracks splitting the wooden surface of both double doors, I could see that they hadn’t been successfully kicked in because clever, shrewd little Kohl had kicked down the door of the first rooms on either side, dragged out a long chaise lounge and then had wedged it between both entrances, holding it almost flush to the threshold. Clucking my tongue, I went into the first darkened room (why hadn’t I gotten a velvet chaise? I would have loved reading on that!) and pushed the heavy daybed back across the corridor and into the left-hand side. I didn’t move it all the way though, only half, and then stood back and let whoever was trying to gain entrance open it for me.

  Boom! A crack of what sounded like thunder shook the walls a little and I gulped, too discombobulated to know if that had just come from one of the boys behind me, or from outside. Either way, I needed to get away from anyone that had the power to do that!

  ‘You kick like a woman!’ I taunted whoever was on the other side of the door, cupping my mouth with my hands to amplify it, and then grinned when a second later the doors burst open. The left handed door only moved a few inches, but the right-hand side came in so fast that it rebounded off the inner wall, blocking T’are’s entrance as soon as he lowered his foot and attempted it. He looked flushed, shocked and then horrified when he saw me, and taking advantage of his bewilderment, I grasped the door and flung it back, then readied myself to burn off his eyebrows.

  ‘Your wings!’ he whispered, looking forlorn. ‘I thought they were going to be white!’

  It was like someone had hit me over the head with a house and I teetered back, gaping at him.

  ‘What? You…?’

  ‘Yes I knew!’ he said quickly, glancing behind me and frowning when he heard and saw evidence of my battle with the Barachiels. ‘You’d be surprised how many of us have been waiting to see your feathers at long last, Larkin Whittaker!’ His gaze was now troubled as it slid back to me, and then assessed my wings again. ‘I had anticipated white plumes, but the black ones are equal to white in loveliness, are they not? Lovely and well-earned, I suspect.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to get out of my way!’ I cried, curling my fingers warningly, but the flames spluttered and went out as though someone had blown out birthday candles, and my heart skipped a fearful beat when I remembered what T’are could do. A translucent haze was swirling around him like a wind now and though it was not hurting me, I could not summon up my defensive heat in his presence. Another thunder crack sounded and now I knew that it had come from outside! I prayed that it was weather, but I doubted it.

  ‘I thought you girls were trained to be well-mannered?’ T’are asked, arching an eyebrow at me, and before I could move to dart past him, he stepped out of t
he way and lifted his arm, motioning me through. ‘All you ever had to do to be free of this place was ask me to stand aside, my lady.’

  I burst out of the room and into the little nook under the stairwell before whirling on him, shivering when I realised how drastically the temperature had decreased over those few feet. The heat from within the harem had been unbearable, and the contrasting chill in the corridor outside of it was almost as bad. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I hugged myself, rubbing my bare upper arms briskly to warm them. ‘Are you saying that I wasn’t really a prisoner here?’

  ‘Not on my terms,’ T’are said and I almost laughed. Or at least I would have if I weren’t so busy sucking in lungful’s of chilled, free air while trying not to cry.

  ‘Well if you intended to let me pass, why didn’t you just say it?’ I demanded tearfully, lifting my skirts and wringing them onto the floor. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind in there!’

  ‘I was given my orders, and you yours,’ he said, and I scowled at him, thinking that he and every other cryptic bastard in this castle could go to hell. ‘But if you cast your mind back to only yesterday morning, you might recall that I urged you to leave before I realised that you had the duchess with you, and made no move to thwart your escape when Chérrine was begging you to leave with her.’

  ‘Chérrine? Cherry?’ My surprise knew no bounds. ‘You were in cahoots?!’

  He smiled. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that, Larkin Whittaker but yes, she’s been doing as requested by the same person that has been instructing me on how to act for a very long time.’

  ‘Satan?’ I demanded, and his eyebrows rose in shock.

  ‘What? No! Why would you even joke about that? I am a light Nephilim, Larkin, not dark! As you are!’ He stepped forward, wiping a tear from my face and then looking down at the blood smeared on his fingertips after sadly. ‘Well, as you will be again.’ He looked back up at me. ‘So long as you still have feathers, there is a chance that your soul will be saved-’