by Lou Morgan
Gwyn sighed. “And Alice?”
“I don’t know. I thought...”
“As far as we’re aware, the device is still running. The hellmouths are holding. Perhaps she’s failed. Perhaps she’s...”
“Not Alice. She won’t fail, Gwyn. Give her time.”
“There is no more time.” Gwyn looked distracted, then flicked his fingers towards something on his left. Electricity arced past Mallory’s ear, and there was a horrible cry behind him.
“I’m not having this discussion again, Gwyn. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little... busy.” Mallory fed more bullets into one of his guns. “You wanted to bring the fight to the Fallen? Here we are. And so much for their attention being focused elsewhere. They were ready. More than ready.”
“And how many of the Twelve have you seen out here, Mallory? You tell me that.” Gwyn didn’t wait for an answer. He spread his wings, showering the ground with white sparks, and, nets or no nets, he soared overhead.
In the middle of the battle, Mallory was suddenly still. He had seen Azazel, yes. He had even seen Charon. But the rest of the Twelve... where were they? They should be here. The Gate had never been breached before. Why were the Twelve not defending it? Mallory didn’t believe for a second that Alice’s presence was a distraction. If anything, he would have expected this to be the diversion, and a grand one at that.
His fingers twitched slightly. There was something happening that he didn’t understand, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. But it didn’t change the fact that he was a soldier, and he was standing at the heart of a war. He loaded his guns, and was moving again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Wheels Within Wheels
ALICE DIDN’T KNOW where she was going. It wasn’t that she was lost, exactly, more that someone else seemed to be in charge of where she put her feet. They moved entirely of their own accord, following a path she couldn’t see. She was just a passenger, along for the ride.
Left, right. Left, right. Down corridors and passageways. Through doorways. Under archways. Past a long row of metal bars set back from the wall, separating her from the space beyond. A space where something squeaked and gibbered and made unspeakable sounds.
There were other noises too: distant shouts and cries. Metal on metal, and every once in a while, something like an explosion. It was far above, and far removed, and didn’t seem to matter. Only one thing mattered. She just wasn’t sure what that was, exactly. Still, her feet seemed to know.
She stopped abruptly in front of a small door. A hatch, cut into the rock. And as she reached for the handle, Alice was surprised to see the fire that jumped from her fingers and into the lock, burning it from the inside out so that the door sprang open.
I didn’t do that, she thought, but if she hadn’t, then who had? The idea of someone else being in charge of the fire did not make her happy. She tried raising her hand, and nothing happened. Not liking this, she thought. She tried again, and although it felt as though she was pushing against water – a whole lot of water – there was give in it, and she felt it. She tried once more, begging her body to listen... and with a dizzying rush, she was herself, and in control again.
“Well, that was... odd,” she said, surprised at how hoarse she sounded. Her head felt heavy and damp and unfamiliar, and she wondered what had happened to her. There had been pain, and fire – a lot of both, come to think of it – and then a warm, white fuzziness which had wrapped itself around her like wool. She could remember everything that had just happened, and she bit down against an unexpected spike of pain as she did, but it almost felt like it had happened to someone else. Shock, perhaps. It did things like that, didn’t it?
So how had she wound up here? And where was here, anyway?
She ducked her head and stepped through the hatch.
Beyond it was a low-ceilinged passageway which she had to stoop even further to walk down. It wound away into the rock ahead of her and she bumped along it, scraping her head, her back, her arms as she went. The further she went, the smaller it seemed to become, and the further it seemed to go on; with each step it felt as though the walls might suddenly collapse in on her and bury her or crush her. She fought the urge to scream, fought the panic rising in her throat, fought the tell-tale pricking of her fingers, and she breathed.
It was a trick, a disguise. Just as the angels hid their wings in plain sight, so this was hiding something. It wasn’t real; not at all.
She closed her eyes tightly, shoving the choking claustrophobia to the back of her brain, and then opened them again, slowly.
She was standing in a doorway. There was no passage, no sharp stone walls beyond. Just a room with some surprisingly shiny wood panelling, given this was still hell. A few details aside, it was the kind of room which wouldn’t look out of place in an old boys’ club: dark wooden walls, a polished floor covered in worn rugs. A desk, topped with green leather. A few chairs – old, and well-used. A roaring fire in the fireplace.
Of course, the devil’s in the details, and they weren’t exactly minor. The room was octagonal; the pictures on the walls not oils of landscapes and gentry but of men and women torn to pieces by wild beasts and savage machines. The fire crackling cheerily in the fireplace burned cold, its flames copper-green. And in the middle of it, half-shrouded by the fire, was Xaphan’s device. A part of her knew what it was and where she would find it before she even stepped into the room. The same part that had led her here, taking charge and guiding her – pushing her – this way. And that part of her, the angel part, apparently didn’t think to share what it knew with the rest of her.
She crouched down and peered at. It was a flat disc, cut from a metal like brass – not the cold-iron she had seen so much of already in hell. But the disc had been sliced again and again into pieces, into rings and sections of rings, all spinning within one another on their own axes. Faster and faster they spun, around and above and beneath each other – through each other, sometimes, and it seemed impossible that this could be it. That this could be the thing she had been sent to find. That something so small could have led to all of that.
She stretched her fingers towards it, and the flames backed away from her. Such a small thing. She could pull it apart with her fingers, burn it to ash, crush it beneath her heel. It didn’t matter how she did it. All that mattered was that it was done.
The metal was cold to the touch, of course. What wasn’t, in hell? But as her fingers brushed it, she saw in her mind’s eye a flash of red, and she understood too late that she had made a mistake. Too late, she realised that this, the tricky little corridor, it was all the same thing. It was all a trap. And as the pain of every soul lured into hell against their better judgement and against their will washed over her, she threw back her head and screamed.
The room filled with fire. The papers curled on the desk, their edges smoking and tanning. The oil melted from the paintings on the wall, the colours sliding down the panelling to the floor. The smell of sulphur filled the air as chair-leather cracked and popped in the heat. It went on forever, until it was just another level of Alice’s own personal hell. It forced her to her knees, and she fought to take control of the fire, of herself; throwing her will up against it harder and harder while it battled her back. And slowly, so slowly, she drew it all back inside herself until there was nothing but Alice left.
Nothing but Alice, who lay on the floor in a pool of sweat and tears and blood.
She had done as they asked.
She had done her best, and perhaps they had doubted it would be enough, but she had done it.
Like everyone else, everyone else, she had done her best.
And now she was angry.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dust & Ashes
BALBERITH WAS RUNNING. He wasn’t built for it, but he was sprinting headlong for the closest way out of hell that he knew, even dropping his bag of precious ledgers on the way. It seemed the only thing to do. After all, if they were to catch him, eve
rything afterwards would be an irrelevance. He glanced over his shoulder, and ran faster.
A fleck of grey settled on his glasses and he brushed it away, feeling it smear between his fingers. Another landed, and another, and soon he was running through a thick grey snow. Before he had gone a hundred yards, he was ankle-deep in it, and he could feel the heat at his back.
He rounded a corner, and his legs gave way beneath him. The doorway... the stairs for which he had so desperately striven... it was sealed. It wasn’t even the angels who had done it – it could only have been one of the Fallen, one of the Twelve. Xaphan, more likely than not. All out to save their own skins, as always.
All was lost.
He turned to face his fate.
IN THE DISTANCE, like flood water rushing down a bore, he saw a wave of boiling flame. Lightning flashed at its edges, the fire churning across it as it rolled into hell.
The Archangels.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A Woman Scorned
“YOU HEAR THAT?” Mallory shouted across to Vin.
“Which bit, in particular?” he shouted back, narrowing his eyes as though it would save his ears.
The noise was louder now than ever. Particularly now the Fallen had started launching their mortars.
Like the nets, they had caught the angels by surprise. One moment, they had been fighting the Fallen on the ground – even the Descendeds having abandoned the air, thanks to the nets – and the next, burning naphtha was raining down on them. There was no shelter, and no respite. Mallory had seen one of Zadkiel’s choir take a direct hit. It was not something he wished to see again. Not long after, he had found Vin. It hadn’t been hard; he simply followed the trail of broken stone.
“Still alive?”
“You know me. Some people are just born lucky.”
“And some have me to look out for them,” said Mallory, knocking Vin off his feet and shooting the Fallen behind him in the face. “Thanks for the gun, by the way.” He waved it, still-smoking, at Vin as he helped him to his feet.
Vin shrugged. “Knew it would come in handy.”
“Any idea where they’re firing those from?” Mallory ducked as another mortar exploded somewhere overhead, raising his wings as though they would shield him.
Vin shook his head, his hands clamped over his ears. “Can’t get in the air long enough to see. And I’ve tried. We’ve all tried.”
“All of you?”
“You can’t ask her to, Mallory. No way.”
“I don’t need to ask her, Vhnori. She knows what needs to be done, and she’s the best one to do it.”
“Mallory,” Vin laid his hand on his friend’s arm. “Please.”
“I’m sorry.” Mallory patted Vin’s hand once, then shook him off. “Find me Saritiel. That’s an order.”
THE FALLEN HAD their mortars, but Gabriel’s choir had their lightning. It arced over the battlefield, never striking the same spot twice. Unlike the mortars, however, the angels had nothing to fear from it. While it bounced unpredictably through the air, it never came even close to hitting an Earthbound or Descended, simply forking around them as it grounded. It was the only advantage the Fallen had not managed to counter, and as a result they were putting their heads together and seeking out any and all of Gabriel’s choir.
The Descendeds had assumed control of the field, issuing commands to Earthbounds within their choirs – but all orders came from Gwyn, and all of those orders went through Mallory. And that was why every single one of Gabriel’s choir had a guard of at least a half-dozen other angels watching their backs, and when one fell, another angel took his place. It was hard and it was bloody and it was cold, but it was working. If only they could get rid of the mortars, they actually stood a chance.
VIN CAME SCRAMBLING back to Mallory, Saritiel right behind him. She was dusty and bruised; a dirty cut ran the width of her forehead and her wings were missing a good handful of feathers.
“It’s no use, Mallory. I tried.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing. They’re everywhere. There’s no artillery, no stands; they could be coming from thin air, for all I can tell. I’m sorry.” She hung her head, and Mallory sighed. Another mortar exploded above, making them all flinch.
“There’s one thing,” she said as the echo died down. “There was talk of driving them back, of pushing them towards the cliff, did I hear that right?”
“Yes. With the walls flanking them, there’s nowhere for them to go. If we push hard enough, we could force them up to the edge. It’s not a plan I like, though.” He shook his head.
Saritiel and Vin exchanged glances as she leaned closer. “We can’t. The cliff? It isn’t a cliff.”
“What?”
“It moves.”
“I’m not sure I understand...”
“Look where we’re standing!” She pointed to the rocks rising above them. “This is where they started out. We have driven them back, but they’re not running out of ground...”
“...And they won’t. Lucifer.” Mallory kicked out at the rock beside him. Lucifer was changing the layout of hell, extending his will into the earth around them and altering it to protect his own. “Alright. That’s good to know.”
“Hardly,” said Vin with a dry laugh. “If you ask me, it’s pretty shitty to know, but hey.”
“At least we can count out the plan where we force them back over the edge,” Mallory said. “I need to get this back to Gwyn. Whether he listens, of course, is another matter.”
He ducked away from them, cutting his way through the fight. One of the Fallen came at him with a knife, but he knocked it away, following closely with a kick to the chest that dropped the Fallen where he stood. Gwyn was some way off, but he could see him, the light of the flares bouncing off his armour, his sword crackling as he swung it left and right. He was taking the Fallen to pieces, but still they kept on coming. Either they were more desperate than Mallory had believed, or they were a sight braver than he had ever realised. Probably something between the two. Gwyn’s sword flashed hypnotically, the smell of lightning slicing the air as Mallory drew closer.
Mallory was aware of a tremendous pressure at his back; of an unexpected heat, and the sensation of sudden weightlessness. Sure enough, he was being lifted off his feet, a thermal beneath his wings picking him up and dragging him aside and ever higher, however hard he fought it. This was not a good place to be. Biting his lip, he closed his wings and dropped like a rock.
GWYN SAW MALLORY tossed aside. He saw the fire coming closer, a step at a time. He felt the heat of it on his face, and for a moment, he welcomed it. It drove out the hellchill, which by now had caught even him. He assumed it was A’albiel.
He was wrong.
ALICE MOVED THROUGH the battle with purpose, not hearing the crack of the lightning or the crash of the mortars. She looked neither left nor right, but made her way steadily towards the heart of the fight. There he stood, his sword in his hand, looking for all the world like an avenging angel should. Except the funny thing was that that was her. With every step, the fire dug deeper into the rock beneath her, putting down roots and burrowing further into hell, finding more pain, more fuel. More fire.
She had done what they asked, and now it was over.
It had begun with a stranger, silhouetted against the gloom of a rainy day, and it would end with him.
It would end now.
MALLORY STUMBLED TOWARDS them: Gwyn, motionless in the face of the fire that came for him, and Alice, serene, but burning like he had never seen. He hadn’t though it possible to burn like that – half-born, Earthbound, Descended, anyone – and to live. Even from where he stood... the heat. The heat of it. And Alice was in there. He tried to call out to her, but the air scorched his throat and no sound came. He was vaguely aware of angels scattering around him, of Fallen running.
There was a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. It was, even by his standards, not the kind of hand you argued with, and he
looked round to find himself staring at A’albiel, who shook his head. “You need to stay here, Mallory. Just go with me on this.”
“I need to get to her. I can help.”
“No. The only thing you’d do in there is burn.”
His grip on Mallory’s shoulder tightened.
ALICE STOPPED IN front of Gwyn, who was frozen, his sword unmoving in his hand. He did not flinch when the ring of fire sprang up around him, locking him inside the burning circle with her, nor when the flames snaked upwards and inwards, seeking each other out and meeting at a point above his head.
INSIDE THE CAGE, everything was quiet. Alice met Gwyn’s astonished stare. “All of this. It’s because of you.”
“All of what, Alice? Hell? Hardly.”
“You think I care about hell? Seriously?”
“It’s in your nature.”
“Screw my nature.”
“You want to blame me for what you are, Alice? You’re looking to the wrong angel.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You forget, Alice, that this began long before you and I met. It began when an angel chose a human over her duty.”
“You should be very, very careful what you say about my mother, Gwyn.” Alice’s hand bloomed into flame.
“And you should remember that you’re a half-born, nothing more. You don’t want to cross me, Alice. You’ll regret it more than you know.” He raised his sword, electricity crackling up and down the length of it. “You really don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?” He made a small gesture with his left hand and a shower of white sparks fell from his fingers, damping the flames. He stepped forward just as Alice hurled the ball of fire she had been holding straight at his head. He ducked, and took another step forward.
