by Lou Morgan
“Who’s dressing up? I’ll have you know this is for real!” He stroked the front of his uniform, looking offended.
“You’re a police officer. Seriously.”
“What the fuck else am I going to do with myself?” he asked, holding out a hand. “Can you stand?”
“One way to find out.” She let him help her up as the flames burned out, trying to decide which she wanted to recover first: her dignity or her balance. She went for balance. She wasn’t sure dignity was an option. “Where did he go?”
“The Fallen? No idea.”
“You know who that was, don’t you?”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday? Right now, I’ve got bigger problems than Xaphan. I’ve got a full-scale riot, and three officers separated from the line. If we don’t get them back, this lot’ll tear them apart. You need to get out of here.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“Maybe once in a while you should listen, yeah?” Castor was already walking away from her, pulling the balaclava back over his face.
And she would have answered, except that when she turned around, Toby was standing directly behind her, his eyes wide. Their eyes met and he took a step back from her.
“I came looking for you. I came back for you.”
“Toby.”
“What was that? You... you were burning. But you’re fine... Look at you. You’re fine.” He waved a hand at her, oblivious to everything else. “How’s that even possible?”
“I can explain... well. Not explain, maybe, but...”
“I don’t... What’s happening? What is this? What’s happening, Alice?”
She already knew she’d lost him. It didn’t matter what she said or didn’t say; he was looking at her like she was a monster or a miracle.
She didn’t have time to plead with Toby, or to tell him to go. She didn’t even have time to tell him that this wasn’t – any of it – what he thought. But the look on his face told her: whatever she said, it would never be enough.
She didn’t have time; as she opened her mouth to speak, the smell of incense filled the air, and a single gunshot rang out.
Alice’s head whipped round.
Mallory.
ALICE NO LONGER heard or saw anything around her. The smoke and the gas were forgotten. The Fallen were brushed aside, and the memory of Toby faded from her mind until it was less than a shadow. All these things were nothing compared to the thought racing through her head.
Mallory’s back.
She craned her neck, but all she saw was the remnants of the riot. The sound of the shot might as well have gone entirely unheard for all the reaction it got: it was as though no-one had heard it at all. Perhaps, she thought, remembering Zadkiel’s presence, nobody had.
Nobody but her.
She turned on the spot, but there was no sign of him, and so absorbed was she in looking for Mallory that she didn’t even notice Toby was gone.
From somewhere down the road, she caught the scent again; that smell of incense... and now she could feel him. Feel his anger at the chaos, feel his determination... and something else. Not fear, exactly; concern? He was nervous, certainly. Not afraid, but...
Slowly at first, and then with increasing confidence, Alice made her way down the street.
The crowd was less dense here; there was no attack, only retreat. Some were walking, some were running. Several were limping, bleeding heavily. One man had his arm slung around another’s shoulder, leaning on him for support. Others jogged backwards, jeering and raising their middle fingers at the rest of the crowd, at the police. Alice passed a couple sitting on the edge of the kerb, their heads in their hands, sobbing. She sympathised. Keeping a lid on her gift, on the all-encompassing desire to burn out the pain and the confusion of the crowd, had left her exhausted. It was all she could do not to sit down beside them and sob with them.
None of these people knew what had really happened here, that they had been sucked into the front line of the fight between the angels and the Fallen. The Fallen had pushed their buttons, had manipulated and twisted them, and the angels had turned up to put a stop to it.
No wonder the people were dazed: they had seen a Descended manifest in their midst, and had had all memory of it wiped from their minds by Zadkiel and his choir. Alice understood, and – if she was honest – was relieved, but on the other hand, if Zadkiel could make a hundred, two hundred people all forget what they had seen, what else could he do?
A shiver ran down the length of her body – one which had nothing to do with the chilly air. Michael with his fire; Gabriel with his lightning, and Zadkiel, who could take away your mind on a whim. She wasn’t sure who worried her more: the Fallen, or the Archangels.
An angel – a Descended – suddenly stepped into her path, blocking her way. He looked vaguely familiar, with sandy hair cropped close to his skull. He looked her up and down. “He said you’d come.”
People really did seem to be making assumptions about her today.
He blinked at her, then stood aside.
And there, behind him, was Mallory.
HE LOOKED ALMOST exactly as she had expected, down to his boots and torn jeans; his leather jacket was as ropey as ever. But there were more lines than she remembered around his brown eyes, and his dark hair was flecked with fresh grey. He was fiddling with his gun as the other angel stepped aside, so absorbed that he didn’t notice her watching him. The tiredness came off him in waves.
She felt unexpectedly guilty. She had spent the last six months being angry at him for leaving her; where had he been to leave him so worn-down? What had he been doing?
He looked up, and their eyes met – and for what seemed like an age, they simply looked at each other.
And then he was smiling, and striding towards her and throwing his arms around her; lifting her off her feet in a bear-hug, and before she knew what she was doing, she was crying.
“What’s this?” He pulled away from her, rubbing at her damp cheeks with his thumb. “If it’s that bad seeing me, I’ll go again...” He started to turn away, and she grabbed onto his arm.
“No. It’s not! Really.”
“I’m kidding, Alice. Stop being so bloody wet, would you?”
“Sorry.” She scrubbed at her face. “It’s been a bit of a trying day, you know?”
“Is that what you call it? Personally, I’d call it getting the shit kicked out of us. I think it’s fair to say we lost this one.” He safetied his gun and it disappeared into his jacket. “And you? How’re you doing?” He put his hands on her shoulders and held her out at arm’s length, ducking down slightly to peer at her. “You look like you’ve been in the wars.”
“Something like.”
“You’ve been getting into trouble, haven’t you?”
“No...”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard you’ve been causing quite a few problems for the Fallen. You and your little crew of Earthbounds.”
“What else was I supposed to do? What would you have done?”
“I thought you’d have learned by now that the last thing you want to do is follow my example, kid.” He grinned, and folded his arms across his chest. “But whatever it is you’ve been up to? It stops. Now.”
“Now you get to tell me what to do, too?”
“Damn straight I do.”
“You don’t just get to...”
“Now you listen to me, Alice...” Mallory’s voice was suddenly hard as he leaned closer to her. “You may think that you’re indestructible. You are not. And I’ve lost enough to know better than to let you go throwing yourself into every scrappy little fight that comes your way. You’re too...”
“Important?” she spat. “Yeah. Right. I remember.” And she did. She remembered Michael telling her that she was a weapon – his weapon, to be used against the Fallen as he saw fit.
“Yes. Important.” Mallory’s voice softened, and his eyes looked sad. He sighed. “But this is neither the time nor the place. W
e need to go.” He raised his voice, calling to the angel who had blocked her way. “Pollux! We’re moving.”
Alice glanced behind her and saw Pollux nod once. He really did look familiar, but she couldn’t work out why. She pushed the thought away, simply relieved to have found Mallory again. Descendeds might make people feel better simply with their presence, but this was something else, more than that. This was Mallory; here, now, back again. And Alice felt better than she had in a long time.
CHAPTER TEN
Echoes and Ghosts
“WHAT TOOK YOU lot so long? You look like shit, by the way.” There was a man sitting at Adriel’s desk, leafing through one of the ledgers. A man who was most definitely not Adriel.
“I see you’ve yet to develop anything like manners. Or charm,” Mallory replied, leaning against the door frame.
“Charm’s overrated.” The intruder leaned back in the chair and pulled a pair of sunglasses down from the top of his head, folding them up and stuffing them into the pocket of his jacket. “And speaking of people with neither charm nor manners, it’s good to see you.”
“Really? Did you miss me, Vin? I’m afraid I didn’t miss you. Not once. Not even slightly.” Mallory’s scowl crumbled, and he grinned. Vin winked back at him.
Alice shook her head. Some things, apparently, never changed.
“Where’d you get the book?” she asked, pointing at the ledger the Earthbound had been reading.
He blinked back at her, then pointed over his shoulder. “On the shelves. I got bored waiting. Don’t you guys keep some magazines in or something?”
“It’s not a dentist’s office, you know. How did you get in, anyway?” Alice leaned back out of Adriel’s office doorway, and looked at the door swinging open on its hinges. The way she’d left it.
Whoops.
She glanced back at Vin, who looked innocent. “Someone forget to lock up, did they? I tell you what: you’re lucky I didn’t lock it with me inside and leave the lot of you out there. Have you seen it out there?”
“Still trotting out that ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’ line, are we?” Mallory had leaned across the desk and spun the open ledger round, and was now flipping through it. “We were outside.”
“And a fat lot of good I bet it’s done you.” Vin suddenly looked serious. “There are Fallen everywhere. In the open. Right there. You can say whatever you want about me, but I’ve paid my dues, and I’ve not complained – not once – but I’m not touching that mess. Not with a forty-foot pole. Screw it.”
Alice frowned at him. There was something... off about him, somehow. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
She realised she wasn’t just frowning, but staring. And, being Vin, he was staring back with an expectant look on his face.
“It’s bothering you, isn’t it?” he said.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is, but yes.”
“It’s the hair.”
“Funny.”
Mallory cleared his throat. “No, really,” he said, “it’s his hair.”
Alice looked at Vin again – and now she saw it. The faint streak of grey that ran through his black hair and disappeared behind his ear.
Like Mallory, he had grey hair. New grey hair.
She looked from one to the other of them, and Mallory nodded. “I know. Later.”
Vin spotted the change in his tone, and ran his fingers through his own hair. “I thought it made me look distinguished. Silver fox, right?”
He ducked as Mallory threw the ledger at him.
It landed with a thump and a ruffle of pages. The room darkened, and the air filled with whispers and echoes. Alice, Vin and Mallory turned to see Adriel silhouetted in the doorway, his wings folding behind him. As he came closer, the heavy book flew back up to the desk – narrowly missing Vin again on its way – and settled on the polished surface.
As soon as he stepped into the office, the shadows retreated; the voices faded, and framed in the door was a man with nothing more remarkable about his appearance than a pair of dusty patches on the knees of his suit. He surveyed the three of them and arched an eyebrow, and Alice wondered just how bad they looked: how bad she looked, covered in dust and dirt and shards of glass; her face stained with smoke and her eyes red from the tear gas.
AFTER SHE HAD found Mallory, it became entirely apparent that there was no point in staying out on the street. The Fallen were there – no doubt about it – but they were too well camouflaged. There were too many people for them to hide among. And when the Descendeds and Zadkiel the Archangel disappeared, it was obvious that Lucifer had too. The angels had lost their prize, leaving only Mallory, Pollux and a handful of Earthbounds scattered through the chaos. And it was chaos. With the angels gone, the full weight of everything that had just happened began to sink into the crowd. They still didn’t remember the angels, but they remembered everything else. The bottles. The batons. The bricks and the flying glass.
Clouds of smoke and gas drifted along the street and they began to understand what they had done.
And as they began to feel it, to really feel it, the inside of Alice’s skin began to itch. It wasn’t much – not at first – just a tiny prickle on the back of her hand. But it was spreading, and fast.
“Mallory?”
He didn’t seem to hear her; he was staring down the street towards a man leaning against a lamppost.
“Mallory! I could really do with not being here, if you get my drift.”
“Couldn’t we all?” he muttered, stubbing at the bottom of a broken bottle with his toe. But he had seen the fire burning in her eyes, and he turned and whistled at Pollux. The other angel nodded.
“Where to?”
“The office.” Alice ducked her head and wrapped her arms around her ribs, trying to keep herself from shaking. “It’s just over there.”
“I know where it is.” Mallory put a hand on her shoulder and steered her through the ragged crowd. There were still knots of people, scarves pulled over their faces, jeering and chanting, and one man peeled off to rush at them as they walked. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” muttered Mallory, raising his elbow and driving it sharply into the man’s face. Their would-be attacker stumbled back with a stunned expression, blood pouring from his nose. Alice’s face started to ache as Mallory shook his head in disbelief. “Some people.”
The windows of the funeral parlour hadn’t been quite so lucky this time around: one had been completely shattered, and a starburst of cracks glittered in the middle of the other. The door was, of course, open, and creaked as Mallory marched Alice through it. Pollux hung back, turning to face the street like a sentry and waiting for them.
Alice leaned against the desk, tipping her head back and swallowing deep breaths of quiet, calm air. Even with the window broken and the door hanging open, the office was serene compared with the world outside, as long as you ignored the glass all over the carpet. And the brick sitting in the middle of the sofa. And what looked like a firework sticking out of one of the flower vases. In here, away from everyone else, she could think. And she could burn it all away.
Spirals of fire sprang up around her wrists; wound through her hair and around her neck. It burned away the pain, the confusion and fear... everything from the crowd, everything from Lucifer, from Xaphan, from Zadkiel. All of them. As the fire died down, Alice was the only one left in her head, and everything she felt was hers alone. She felt better. She didn’t even feel guilty about the carpet. Not much, anyway.
Mallory was perched on the back of the sofa, waiting. “Outside. All that... you kept it in. I’m impressed.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to practice.”
“Oh, no. I’m not getting into that conversation.”
“Mallory...”
“I said no.” His voice was still quiet, but it was firm. His absence was not up for discussion. “Besides, you’ve got company.” He pointed to the door to Adriel’s office, which was slightly ajar, and that was where they
found Vin, hunched over Adriel’s desk and completely absorbed in reading the ledger.
THE LEDGER UPON which Adriel now drummed his fingertips like a disappointed headmaster about to discipline a class. He looked from Alice’s smoke-stained face to Mallory’s boots to Vin’s fingers, blackened by ink where he had touched the pages. “Open it,” he said, tapping the closed cover. “Open it to any page.”
He pushed the book towards Vin, who looked nervous but did as he was told.
Adriel nodded at the book. “A name.”
“Err... Holland?”
“Thirteenth of July, nineteen twenty-three. Oak coffin. Another.”
Vin ran his finger down the page. “Samson.”
“Pauper burial, nineteen twenty-four. Shroud, no coffin. No family. Another.”
“I think I get the picture...”
“I said another!”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes, and Alice saw Adriel’s jaw set in a grim line. “Smith.”
“Do you really think it’s wise to tease me, Vhnori? If you had taken the time to count them, as I have, you would know that there are five hundred and thirty-two Smiths in that volume alone. But you wouldn’t know this, because to you, that book is simply something to occupy your largely empty mind.” He snatched the ledger from the desk, holding it close. “Every one of these names is a life. A life now lost. Some of these souls had none to mourn them, none to remember them. None but me. It is my privilege to do so, just as it was my privilege to care for them in death. These names matter. These ledgers matter. I will not see them taken lightly.” He glowered at Vin, who stared at his shoes, looking suitably cowed.
“He didn’t mean any harm,” said Mallory, but Adriel shook his head and slid the book back onto its shelf.
“Perhaps not. But the result is the same, intentionally or no. The angels have grown careless; forgetful. They forget that humans are where the power lies. The Fallen have not been so foolish.”
“Never thought I’d hear anyone saying that. Least of all you.” Mallory did not sound surprised. Resigned, but not surprised.
