by Lou Morgan
“You’re expecting us to believe that there’s someone out there who would voluntarily spend time with you?” asked Mallory, his head tipped back.
Vin pulled a face. “Sari wants to get a drink sometime.”
“She must have got hit on the head.” Mallory stretched his wings out and sighed happily. “Poor kid.”
“Piss off,” said Vin. Alice laughed, and looked up at the sky. It looked no different from any other clear night she had seen, with the stars glittering high above them.
It looked no different, because it was no different.
The only thing that had changed was her.
She watched as the two angels, Descended and Earthbound, set off across the field ahead of her. They were still bickering, occasionally swatting at each other. She looked back down the hole they had clambered out of; through caves and tunnels, through blood and fire and ice. Through hell.
Mallory stopped, turned. “You coming, or what?”
And then she wrapped her coat about her, and hurried after them.
IN THE SHADOWS behind them, a pair of dark-rimmed eyes flashed red, and watched them go.
CODA
“YOU’VE HEARD THAT Lucifer’s body has been captured?”
“And what good is that, Adriel? With most of the Twelve still loose, and Lucifer able to ride any one of the Fallen?”
“It’s something.”
“It’s nothing. Worse than nothing.”
Michael watched the last of his choir moving among the motionless figures on the Plains; watched them moving slowly and methodically through them, killing the Ghasts they found. From high above, it almost looked as though they were taking up positions on a grid.
Beside him, Adriel looked down over the edge. “And what about them? The ones the Fallen took?”
“What about them indeed?” said Michael thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Hell has enlarged herself, and that cannot be. If we leave things like this, balance is... unsustainable.”
“But the taken... they’re innocents.”
“In my experience, Adriel, no-one is an innocent.”
Michael’s angels had stopped moving. One by one, they raised their arms and fire flared in the palms of their hands: tiny orange stars casting a hot glow across the Plains of the Damned.
“This isn’t the way.”
“That’s for me to decide. This is my army.”
“Is it? Are you sure about that?” Adriel spoke softly, and Michael showed no sign of having heard him.
“Michael?”
“Not a single one worth saving,” said Michael, balancing a ball of flame between his hands.
He tossed it over the edge of the cliff, and turned away as his angels began to retreat, fire spinning behind his eyes.
“Let them burn.”
About the Author
BORN IN WALES in the UK, Lou Morgan grew up in a house with an attic full of spiders and now lives on the south coast of England with her husband, son and the obligatory cat.
Her short fiction has been published by the British Fantasy Society, Hub Fiction and Morpheus Tales, and most recently her story “At the Sign of the Black Dove” appeared in the Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse anthology.
She drinks a lot of tea, is very mouthy about archery and likes cathedrals, comics and Christopher Nolan movies. And probably things beginning with other letters of the alphabet, too.
She can be found online at loumorgan.co.uk, or – far too often – wasting time on Twitter as @LouMorgan.
Blood and Feathers is her first novel.
Acknowledgements
THERE ARE SO many people I should mention here that they could almost fill a book by themselves – and even then I’m sure I’d manage to leave someone out. That being said, these are the people who would inflict actual physical pain on me if I forgot them. So.
My deepest thanks to Jon Oliver: editor, friend and all-round good guy, for taking a leap of faith; and to the team at Solaris – Ben Smith, David Moore and Michael Molcher – for making me feel like a part of the family.
Pye Parr for beautiful artwork and for generally just being very cool. Someone’s got to do it...
“Team Angel”: Adele Wearing, Ro Smith and Jenny Barber, for feeding (and occasionally slapping) The Ego.
Rob Shearman, Tom Pollock, Lizzie Barrett, Jenni Hill, Fiona Higgins, Gary McMahon, Sarah Pinborough, Guy Adams, Mike Shevdon and Michael Marshall Smith, for a thousand kindnesses.
Sonja, for Milton and Marlowe and so many other things.
Will, for friendship, support and endless patience & encouragement. I owe you.
Vinny, for letting me borrow your name and maintaining a sense of humour even when I dropped it off the top of a nine-storey building. You’re the best kind of angel.
Tesna, for being a better friend than I ever deserved, and for being the devil on my shoulder.
My dad, and my mother – who once asked me what I was doing this for. I miss you, and I hope this answers your question.
My husband and my son. You already know why.
And to you, reading this – whoever you are, wherever you are. Thank you.
Blood and Feathers Playlist
THESE ARE THE tracks I was listening to while I wrote Blood and Feathers. Some of them go with specific scenes, some are kind of attached to characters – Vin, for instance has his own little theme tune hidden away in here, and so does Mallory. Which song goes where... I leave you to decide for yourself.
All the Right Moves: OneRepublic
Make Me Wanna Die: The Pretty Reckless
Believe Me: Fort Minor
Slip Out the Back: Fort Minor
It’s Not the End of the World: LostProphets
Only Man (Jakwob Remix): Audio Bullys
Burning in the Skies: Linkin Park
When They Come For Me: Linkin Park
New Divide: Linkin Park
Dreamcatcher: Unicorn Kid
The Island, Pt I (Dawn) & Pt 2 (Dusk): Pendulum
Witchcraft (Rob Swire’s Drum-step Mix): Pendulum
Ich Tu Dir Weh: Rammstein
Bulletproof Heart: My Chemical Romance
The Only Hope For Me is You: My Chemical Romance
Teeth: Lady Gaga
Walking in Circles: Dead by Sunrise
Dead Reckoning: Clint Mansell
End Credits: Chase & Status with Plan B
Angelic Sigils
The angelic sigils which appear in Blood & Feathers are, technically, “real”... that is to say, these are some of the sigils historically used by alchemists and others as part of rituals to invoke or conjure angels: the most famous (or infamous) practitioner being John Dee.
Along with Edward Kelley, Dee devised (or “received,” as he claimed) an angelic language and alphabet which he recorded in his journals, and which later became known as Enochian.
The sigils for the five Choirs in the Blood & Feathers world are show below.
Barakiel
“If I told you Barakiel’s very handy round the card table...”
Gabriel
“You can always rely on Gabriel for a bit of old-school wrath and vengeance.”
Michael
“I’ve never even met one of Michael’s choir. There aren’t many of them, and they’re the big guns.”
Raphael
“You’re a healer, aren’t you? That’s what you do, isn’t it, when you’re one of Raphael’s. That’s all you do.”
Zadkiel
“Zadkiel. He’s all about memory and the mind and stuff.”
The angelic war has spread out of control, and violence erupts across the globe as the Fallen’s influence grows.
As the Twelve walk the Earth, the Archangel Michael is determined to destroy Lucifer once and for all, whatever the cost – and Alice, Mallory and Vin will be called on to sacrifice more than they ever imagined possible.
The Fallen will rise.
Trust will be betrayed.
And all he
ll will break loose...
BLOOD AND FEATHERS:
REBELLION
Coming August 2013
Solaris
A heroine who really gets up close and personal!
Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex... other things, runs The Red Lantern, the best brothel in the city. She’s got elves using sex magic upstairs, S&M in the basement and a large green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and she’d love you to visit, except...
She’s not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, girls are disappearing, and if she can’t pay her taxes, Babylon’s going to lose the Lantern. She’d given up the mercenary life, but when the mysterious Darask Fain pays her to fi nd a missing heiress, she has to take the job. And then her past starts to catch up with her in other, more dangerous ways.
Witty and fresh, Sebold delivers the most exciting fantasy debut in years.
‘Ingenious, gripping, and full of pleasures on every level. Exceptional.’
— Mike Carey, New York Times Bestselling author of The Unwritten
www.solarisbooks.com
POLICING THE DAMNED
They live among us, abhorred, marginalised, despised. They are vampires, known politely as the Sunless. The job of policing their community falls to the men and women of SHADE: the Sunless Housing and Disclosure Executive. Captain John Redlaw is London’s most feared and respected SHADE officer, a living legend.
But when the vampires start rioting in their ghettos, and angry humans respond with violence of their own, even Redlaw may not be able to keep the peace. Especially when political forces are aligning to introduce a radical answer to the Sunless problem, one that will resolve the situation once and for all...
New York Times bestselling author James Lovegrove tells a very different sort of vampire story.
‘Difficult to put down... a thoroughly entertaining novel that I would recommend to those looking for a summer blockbuster’
Sacramento Book Review on Age of Odin
www.solarisbooks.com
Carl meets Annie Risk and falls for her.
Hurt by a recent relationship, she resists becoming involved. A chance find offers distraction. Carl stumbles across part of a map to an unknown town. He becomes convinced it represents the city of his dreams, where ice skaters turn quintuple loops and trumpeters hit impossibly high notes... where Annie Risk will agree to see him again. But if he ever finds himself in the streets on his map, will they turn out to be the land of his dreams or the world of his worst nightmares?
British Fantasy Award winner Nicholas Royle has written a powerful story set in a nightmarish otherworld of fathers and sons, hopes and dreams, love and death.
‘Immaculately sinister’
TLS on Mortality
‘A thoroughly satisfying, thought-provoking and beautifully realized work that will keep you pondering for days and will seep into your dreams’
Infinity Plus on Antwerp
www.solarisbooks.com
Praise for Lou Morgan
Title
Indicia
Dedication
Quotes
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Coda
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Blood and Feather Playlist
Angelic Sigils
'Blood and Feathers: Rebellion'
'Babylon Steel' by Gaie Sebold
'Redlaw' by James Lovegrove
'Regicide' by Nicholas Royle
