Blood and Feathers

by Lou Morgan

IT HAD NOT been hard to draw Nathanael away from the host on the Hill before the enemy had even broken ranks. Nathanael was a good solider, a loyal soldier. It only took the mention of Gabriel’s name...

  The battle was bloody and no-one thought twice when they saw Gwyn, stained with the stuff. No-one thought to question whose blood it might be, and when they found Nathanael’s broken body, it only took a whisper to confirm what they feared: that the Fallen had finally bested one of their own. In the confusion, few had even noticed his absence, and Gwyn felt satisfied. Proud, even.

  But someone had noticed: A’albiel.

  WITH EACH SUCCESS, Gwyn’s confidence grew. He had placed himself in the perfect position. He followed Alice’s progress, he monitored Mallory, Vhnori, even A’albiel. Anyone who might influence her. He dragged the spy Abbadona back out of hell by his heels, screaming, and offered him a deal he did not have the power to keep – confident in the knowledge that Gabriel, once all this was done, would reward him. With a well-placed word, he had even persuaded Gabriel that the time was right to attack, and now it was all coming down around his ears.

  He had forgotten to watch the girl. Not Alice – the other one. Florence. It had never occurred to him, not once, that she would side with the Fallen. He could see why they found her so attractive, naturally, but even so. When he had realised, he had set about ensuring the blame fell squarely where it deserved to. On Vhnori.

  Everything was unravelling. How could Gwyn have known that Xaphan would catch both Alice and Abbadona? And how could Gwyn have known that she would turn on him... him, of all the possible choices? Not Michael, not Mallory, but him? How could he have known that there was a bigger plan than his at work: greater than a single angel’s plan for advancement and more powerful than his own ambition.

  He raised his sword, and one of the Fallen dropped to his knees with white fire pouring from his mouth.

  Victory was all that mattered now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Pennies from Heaven, Dropping Like Rain

  ALICE DROPPED HER head into her hands with a sigh. “What is it with this lot?” she asked no-one in particular.

  She had been waiting – not long, admittedly, but long enough – to see if Michael came back. She sat in Balberith’s study, listening to the faint explosions from above, staring blankly at the spines of the ledgers. Once or twice she had even walked over to the shelves to run her fingers along the leather, watching the sparks that jumped from her nails.

  It would only take a moment to find it.

  A moment to see everything she already knew to be true, laid out on paper in front of her.

  She stared the books down, and she turned her back on them.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected from Michael. Perhaps she had expected him to be like Mallory, only, somehow, more so. Clearly, she couldn’t have got that more wrong. And while the simple fact that Michael had been a disappointment didn’t bother her as much as it could have, there was something else...

  What if she was wrong about her mother?

  All her life, Alice had carried memories of her mother; bone-deep, stone-solid memories. They were all she had of her. And although the things Mallory had told her had made her faith in them waver slightly, they still held up. Or at least, they had until now.

  But what if she was wrong. What if everything she had believed in, everything she remembered, was a lie?

  THE DOOR CREAKED, and Alice whipped round to look at it – half in hope, half in fear. But angels didn’t tend to hide in hell’s half-open doorways, and there was no sign of anyone. Still, had the door really been that far open? She stared at it, but it didn’t move. There was something odd, though, something about the floor, about the way it caught the light. It was shining. Ice.

  Alice was across the room and throwing open the door in a heartbeat, looking out and down the corridor. It was empty, stretching away out of sight. Shadows dripped down the walls, pooling on the floor. Hell was collapsing under the force of the angels and she wondered idly whether this was how people felt as their ships sank, as their cars spun and left the road, as their planes crashed: the pressure of slow, aching inevitability. The flat black space left when all hope has gone.

  Her foot slid out from beneath her, throwing her into the wall, and she realised there was ice out here, too – and not everywhere, but snaking its way along the corridor. A pathway. There was no way of telling where it went, but what did she have to lose?

  The ice creaked beneath her, and the uneven surface sent her slipping sideways, first one way, then the other, but still she was running. The rough walls on either side of her bruised her as she hit them, scraped and cut her, and soon her arms and hips were red and raw. Blood dripped from her fingertips, where sparks danced. Still she was running, following the path that had been left for her.

  The corridor sloped sharply downwards and she almost lost her footing altogether. Clinging to the walls, she edged forward, onward, downward. The drop grew steeper and soon the floor turned into steps, all coated in a layer of ice. And still she followed it, even as the shadows thickened, and the world shook around her.

  Even for hell, it was cold here, and she could have sworn she could feel the wind on her face.

  The corridor turned abruptly back on itself, and ended in a solid wall of ice. Or at least, it appeared to. Alice took a deep breath and slapped her hand against the wall.

  “Charon!”

  Nothing.

  “Charon! I know you’re here.”

  A faint whispering sound, somewhere inside the ice.

  “Charon, come out, before I burn you out.”

  “Look at you,” Charon was still buried in the ice, but Alice could see her clearly, blocking her path. Their eyes met, and Charon gave her a sly smile. Just like all the others, she had too many teeth. Far too many teeth. “Look what the angels have done to you, child. Turned you into their toy. Are you here for them, or for you? Do you even know?”

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  “Hell’s business is my business. I keep the Gate. I keep order here.”

  “Seriously? I kind of hate to break it to you, but you’re really bad at it. And – I’d guess – out of a job.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Not going to. So we could stand here...” Alice stopped, knowing how absurd it sounded, and laughed. “You know what? You brought me down here. You wanted me down here, and don’t for a second think I don’t know who’s pulling the strings. Open the damned door.”

  “As you wish.” Charon moved aside and the ice opened like a curtain, peeling back to leave an empty space. A blast of cold, stale air wrapped around Alice as she stared into the darkness, and she heard Charon whisper something behind her.

  “And that was what, exactly?”

  “Nothing that you would understand, half-breed.”

  “That’s it. Screw you. I’m sick of this. I’m tired. I’m so incredibly fucking tired, and I’m cold.” With that, she rounded on Charon, plunging her hand into the ice behind her and doing her best to shut out the biting, blinding cold. And then Alice’s fingers closed around Charon’s wrist, and she smiled at her. “Like I said: out of a job.”

  She watched Charon’s wide smile fade and turn to horror as she realised what was about to happen, as fire slid around her wrist and bubbled up her arm, as she screamed inside the ice-wall as it started to boil, and all the time, Alice held her there, watching her burn.

  With Charon’s scream still ringing in her ears, she turned and started down the stairway into the darkness.

  THE STAIRS FELT like they went on forever, and with every step, it grew colder and darker, as though the shadows were filling hell from its roots. The breeze she had felt on her face was stronger here, moving her hair and forcing her to pull her coat tighter just to keep from freezing.

  Each step took her further, deeper, into the cold, and she was afraid now, really afraid, but unable to
stop.

  And with no warning, the stairs ended at a narrow, arched doorway. Beyond, everything was cold and blue.

  Alice stepped through the archway.

  SHE WAS STANDING on the edge of a frozen lake, the doorway at her back. The shadows were gone here: everything was the same flat blue that made her eyes itch and burn. She thought she’d got used to it, but somehow, here it seemed flatter. Bluer. Colder.

  Something moved under the ice and she dropped into a crouch, rubbing her hand across the surface to clear it of frost, to see beneath. A face loomed out of the deep, eyes open but unseeing. Scars ran down the cheeks; the skin was blistered and dead-white. Feathers floated in the water around it, and just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Below, the shadow-shapes of wings, of war-torn limbs and broken bodies, drifted, lost beneath the ice.

  Alice wrapped her arms around her chest and stared into the light. There was something ahead of her, on the ice, although she couldn’t quite make it out at this distance. It was solid-looking. A block, resting on the surface of the ice, perhaps? And there was something in front of it, something darker. It almost looked like a figure. Just... sitting.

  Not sitting.

  Waiting.

  Suddenly, her legs were moving, her feet running, pounding the ice. She did not hear the cracking of the ice, nor feel the cold wind as it blasted her. She did not see the fingers, the hands, the arms which reached up from beneath the ice – forever frozen there, hopeless and helpless. She did not see them, and her feet moved past them.

  ALICE WAS SIX years old, and barefoot

  Alice watched her mother die

  Alice watched an angel Fall.

  The wind is still rising, and Alice’s hair is blowing now, into her eyes and her mouth. She tucks it behind her ears, but it whips free again, flipping around her like a halo.

  Alice is six, and twenty, and twenty-three. Everything she has ever been, everything she ever could be, is coming together now. Now, on the lowest level of hell, here on the frozen lake where her mother has always been waiting for her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  We All Go to Hell

  SOMEONE HAD FASTENED a tight band around Alice’s chest and was twisting it harder and harder, until it was impossible to breathe. The ice she stood on was thick, she knew that, she did – but it still felt spongy and far-off beneath her feet.

  Her feet had run towards the thing on the lake of their own accord, and now they had stopped all by themselves. It was still a little way off, but Alice could see it more clearly: a great slab of ice. And inside it was a man.

  Not a man: an angel. From here, she could see his wings, outstretched and shackled and buried in the ice.

  Not an angel. Lucifer.

  This was the heart of hell, and the ice was his prison.

  She understood then: the Gate, the Fallen, the brands. Everything about hell was designed to protect him. He was vulnerable, both buried and exposed, and he had found a way to bend not just the Fallen to his will, but hell itself. It answered only to him. A sudden memory flashed through her mind – a memory of a face pushing up through the rock, of a face made of the rock beneath her as she stood on the wrong side of the Bone-Built Gate. The right side, if you thought about it.

  He had been watching her all along.

  THE WOMAN IN front of Lucifer’s cell was sitting, hunched over, her head down. Long grey-streaked hair fell over her face and shoulders. The burned ruins of wings stuck out uncomfortably from her back, the bones at odd angles to one another; the feathers stripped to little more than spines. She showed no sign of noticing Alice when she stopped in front of her, but instead rocked to and fro, humming something under her breath.

  Alice felt a stab of raw emotion as she recognised the lullaby.

  “Mum? Mum?”

  Still the angel rocked to and fro, back and forth, humming softly to herself.

  “Mum? It’s me. It’s Alice. Can you hear me?”

  Nothing, although Alice could have sworn that the humming stopped, just for a second, then continued.

  “It’s Alice, Mum. Alice. Do you... do you remember?” She bit her lip. What if she didn’t remember her, didn’t know her? Would that be worse than the other things she had been so desperately fearing?

  “Mum. Mum.” Alice knelt beside her and reached forward, hesitantly, laying her fingertips on her shoulders.

  The hand that slapped her away moved too fast to see. Anger boiled up inside Alice and her palms itched and ached, but she swallowed the rising fire even as it choked her. She reached forward again, her voice steadier this time. “Mum...?” She shook her head. It was hopeless. “I guess you don’t remember me. Do you remember who you were, before you were here? Your name was Kate...”

  “Haven’t been Kate for a long time.” The voice was an echo, a shade. But it was her mother’s. “I was, once. I dreamed a life. But it was only a dream, I think.”

  “It wasn’t a dream. Look at me. You did have a life. Your name was Kate. You were married, his name was Richard. You had a daughter, Alice. Me.”

  “Alice. No. I would remember. I would remember a daughter. I have no daughter.”

  The words were like a blow to the face. Fire flared in Alice’s hands before she could stop it, and the Fallen angel’s head jerked up.

  “Fire. Fire bad. Burning, burning.” She skittered backwards, hands scrabbling for purchase on the ice, trying to get as far away from Alice as she could.

  “No!” Alice clamped her hands together. “No, no. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I just want you to remember.”

  “Nothing to remember. Only cold. And dreams. So many dreams.” She lifted her head and her hair fell away from her face.

  Alice found herself looking at her mother. Older than she knew it, and thinner, greyer, but it was her mother’s face. Her mother’s eyes.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Flying. I dream of flying. Of stars. Of the sun and the moon and the seas. Of light. Of warmth. Of hope.” Her eyes met Alice’s, and she blinked. “I dream of hope.”

  “You used to have another name. Before. Do you remember that?”

  “Names are all the same. All useless here. We are legion, we are nameless. We are Fallen.”

  “Seket. Your name was Seket. Your real name, I suppose.”

  Alice saw something shift behind her mother’s eyes: a spark that had not been there a moment ago.

  “Seket.” She frowned. “Yes. That name. I... I know it. I can feel it. It feels like sunshine. Like summer rain.”

  “I guess?” Alice found herself shuffling uncomfortably. This was... well, strange. Even allowing for the fact she was talking to her not-actually-dead-after-all mother in hell, this was strange. “You remember?”

  “I do, I think. I was not always here. Not always cold. I had... I was...”

  Seket raised her hands, turning them over as though seeing them for the first time. One of her wrists flashed white in the icy light, and Alice flinched. Of course her mother was branded. She had known she would be, and yet... to see it. It shocked her.

  “Alice?”

  “What?” Alice looked up. Her mother looked back at her. It was not just her mother’s face, but her mother, all of her, looking out from behind her eyes.

  “Alice.”

  “Mum?”

  “I remember. I remember, Alice. Everything.”

  “I thought...”

  “How could I forget you, Alice?” Seket was standing now, slowly, unfolding herself, holding her hands out to her daughter.

  “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “You did. I lost myself. That’s what happens here. That’s why it’s hell.”

  “You left. You left us. You left me.”

  “I know.”

  “How could you do that?” Alice snatched her hands back. “How could you choose to do that? It’s not even that you let it happen. You chose it.”

  “And you’re angry with me. I understand.”

  �
��No, you don’t.”

  “You’re forgetting, Alice. You’re forgetting that I am more than you think I am. I am more than just Kate, mother to Alice and wife to Richard. I am Seket, once of Raphael’s choir.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t you see? I understand what you feel, because I feel it too. I feel it because you do...”

  “But I don’t know what I’m feeling! I just... can’t.” The words tumbled out of Alice’s mouth. And it was true. She didn’t know.

  Since Mallory had told her that her mother was still alive, still there, somewhere, Alice had imagined what it would be like to see her again. To speak to her. To rescue her. It was the reason she had walked into hell without a second thought, despite the fear and the cold and the horror. It had kept her going through the darkness, through the noise, even through the rage and the fire and the pain. And now, after all the years without her – after everything that had changed – she was faced with a stranger. A stranger who was both more and less than her mother. Or at least, her mother as she remembered her.

  Seket nodded, as though she heard everything Alice thought.

  “How else could you feel, Alice? What do you expect? I am who I always was, but you did not ever know me, not truly. You could not. And you... look at you. You were a child. My child.” She broke off, looking down at her feet. Alice followed her gaze. She was barefoot. Seket cleared her throat. “Don’t you see? I never chose to leave you. How could I? Never.” Her hands crept towards Alice’s face, hesitated, then continued, smoothing down her hair. “It was because I didn’t want to leave you. Because I wanted to protect you. I was ready to run forever, to outrun the angels. And I could have. I know I could have... except...” She tailed off and Alice pulled away.

  “Except what?”

  “Except that I knew, Alice, when you were born. I knew what you would be, and I didn’t want you to carry that, to carry the burden. I went to Michael. I called him, and he came. But Gabriel, he heard my call too. He followed, and he found me.”