by Lou Morgan
“I should think so,” said another voice. This one was crystal clear. It could only be Michael.
She groaned again, and peeled both eyes open, lifting her head and trying to clear it. The world was fuzzy, and sparkled around the edges. “Well, that was fun,” she croaked as she tried to pull herself into a sitting position. A hand gripped her arm, helping her, and the scent of cut grass and the sun on concrete overwhelmed her.
“Easy...” said Zadkiel. “You alright?”
“Probably.” She nodded, her eyes beginning to clear. There were three Archangels watching her. One looked concerned, one looked indifferent, and Alice could only describe the look on the other’s face as ‘spectacularly pissed off.’ She held up her wrists and rattled the chains around weakly. “Who do I have to thank for the jewellery?”
“It’s a reminder. And a precaution.” Michael’s voice was chilly, despite the heat which rolled off him.
‘Pissed off’ apparently didn’t quite cover it.
“A precaution against what, exactly?”
“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but one of the most dangerous of the Fallen and his whore are loose in my fortress; a half-born we brought here to protect is gone, along with an Earthbound and one of the best soldiers I have in my army. Not to mention all the members of my choir who have been slaughtered in the process. And yet here you are, Alice, sitting in front of me. You, who brought them in. The chains are a precaution against you, and a reminder of who and what you are.”
“A precaution against me. Seriously?”
“You.”
“Yeah, right.” Alice rolled her eyes.
The blow to her face caught her by surprise. Michael had darted forward and slapped her cheek, hard, while Gabriel and Zadkiel stood by, impassive apart from the twitch at the side of Gabriel’s mouth, which could have been a smirk. It stayed there as he looked her up and down, then strode out of the room.
The fire around Alice’s wrists flared into life, coiling under and through and around the chains, making the metal shine as it grew hotter and hotter... but it did not melt. Michael stood back, watching her as she clambered to her feet; the weight of the chains dragged against her, but she resisted their pull and managed to keep upright. Michael scowled at her, and she scowled back at him.
Alice flinched as the flame rushed towards her, wrapping itself around the two of them and locking them inside a sphere of fire. There was nothing beyond it; the world outside simply disappeared. All that was left was Michael, searching her mind inside the inferno. She could feel him crawling over the surface of her thoughts, riffling through her memories. Everything he touched blazed, scorching her from the inside out... but still she held his gaze. Even as her knees began to buckle, she held his gaze. Even as he pulled at the memories she had tried to forget – memories of hell, memories of the cold, of the pain, of her mother – and dragged them out into the light and made them dance before her. Even as he did all this, she held his gaze and would not look away.
Michael pulled away from her and let the fire die. “Mallory and Vin are missing,” he said.
“Missing?”
“Gone. As is Jester. And, apparently, Xaphan and Florence. And all I have to show for it are a lot of dead angels.”
“And Fallen.”
“Those I don’t care about. They’re dead.”
“I thought this place was supposed to be all high-security. What happened?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Michael snarled. “Well?” He raised an eyebrow at Alice.
“You were in my head. You know already.”
“Remind me.”
So she did. She told him how they had run into Jester in the corridor. How they had been ambushed by Xaphan; how Vin had stayed behind to buy them more time. How the smoke had come from nowhere, choking them and separating them from Jester. How Mallory had...
Mallory. Mallory was missing.
How could he be missing? How could Vin?
“Michael? Don’t you think that’s enough? You’ve made your point.” Zadkiel’s voice was quiet, but firm. Michael waved him away, but Zadkiel simply said Michael’s name again.
“Fine.” He waved a hand and the chains around Alice’s wrists clattered back to the floor; Alice stepped over the pile, rubbing her wrists. Her cheek still stung, but not as much as knowing that Michael had thought she might actually be a part of all this. But that was just one among many hurts she felt, so she decided to simply throw it on the heap. She rubbed at her shoulder, which felt like someone had swung her around by it.
“What about the part I don’t know?” she asked. “What happened to me?”
“You,” said Michael, the anger on his face fading into amusement, “took a swan-dive off the roof.”
“I remember.”
“I only just caught you in time.”
“You caught me?”
“You’d rather I hadn’t?”
“Thank you.”
“What’s this?” He sounded surprised. “Gratitude? From you?”
“You’d rather I didn’t thank you?” He narrowed his eyes as she spoke. A heat-haze shimmered in the air above him... and Alice remembered how the air had, just for a second, glowed as she fell. Michael had caught her. By her arm, she was willing to bet. Her hand went to her shoulder.
“Next time,” he said, “if you’re planning to jump off the top off my priory, you might like to pick a better spot. Or at least give me a little warning.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. They were behind me.”
“They?”
“I don’t know who. Someone. Mallory tried to stall them, but they followed me all the way up the stairs. There was nowhere else to go.”
“So you chose to jump, rather than to be taken.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You’ll stay here until we can discover where they’re being held.”
“As a guest? Or a prisoner?”
“I still think ‘guest’ sounds better, don’t you?”
“Nice to know we’re on the same page,” she muttered.
Michael turned away, and stepped lightly onto the dais beside the wooden throne, skirting around it. “I wouldn’t be so glib, if I were you. Mallory. Vhnori. Jester. They all have one thing in common. What do you suppose that might be, Alice? And has it occurred to you that you might be next?”
“Guest it is. One thing, though?”
“You aren’t exactly in a position to be asking for favours.”
“I don’t think you’ll have a problem with this one.”
“Oh?”
“When we find them, Vin and Mallory – and we will – and we find who’s responsible for this? I go with you.”
“Done.” But as he said it, Michael’s back was turned to Alice, and she did not see the slow smile that spread across his face...
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Only a Soldier
IT WAS THE dripping that woke him. Something dripping onto his face. Something regular and insistent.
It was cold.
It was annoying.
Mallory raised a hand to his cheek to wipe the drip away, and was surprised to discover, firstly, that his whole face was wet, and secondly, that there was something around his left wrist. A band of some kind. It felt like metal.
He opened his eyes and blinked at the darkness, and heard someone or something scuttle away.
That was enough to get his eyes completely open, and he sat bolt upright, pulling himself into a defensive crouch and feeling for his guns.
They had gone. Frantically, he felt along the line of his belt. Nothing. In his pockets: no guns. No bullets. Worse: no hip flask.
He groaned.
There was another scuttling sound. And, unless he was mistaken, someone breathing.
“Who’s there?” he called into the darkness.
“...THE FUCK.” VIN moaned as he rolled over. He was somewhere cold and dark and wet. And he had a
n appalling headache. Almost like he’d been hit over the head. He blinked. It didn’t appear to make any difference. It was still dark. He tried to remove his sunglasses, hoping that might help. They weren’t there.
“Well, that’s not a good start, is it?” he said to no-one in particular. Only the echoes of his voice answered him.
The throbbing pain in his head radiated from a point at the back of his skull; he felt for it and yelped as he found a large lump. Red and white pain spiked through his head, blooming in front of his eyes. Someone had hit him over the head. “Bastards,” he muttered through his teeth. The pain was subsiding – a little. Not that it improved the situation much: as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he started to pick out walls, and a concrete floor. And very little else.
“Mallory?”
Silence.
“Alice?”
Silence.
“Anyone?”
Somewhere, not too far away, something barked.
“Bollocks,” said Vin.
“WHO’S THERE? I can hear you, so there’s not much bloody point in pretending, is there?”
The breathing on the other side of the room was a little calmer now; a little less afraid. Mallory closed his eyes, trying to pinpoint where it came from.
“I know you’re there,” Mallory said, softer this time. Whoever it might be, he certainly wasn’t in the mood, nor the condition, for a fight. His chest ached where the buckshot had torn holes in his flesh; the feel of his feathers rubbing against each other was like razors sliding down his back... but he was healing. He knew he was healing, because if he wasn’t, he’d be dead. What he didn’t know was how long it would take.
“Look, I’m sure you have your reasons for pretending you can’t hear me, but I’ve had a difficult day. Days. I don’t know. Either way, my patience is wearing pretty thin, and I’ve got fuck-all to drink, so you can either come out and talk to me, or you can hide in the shadows and wait for me to come find you. And if I have to come find you, I can promise you I’ll be even more pissed off than I am now. Your choice.” He hunkered back on his heels.
There was a sound which could have been someone clearing their throat, somewhere in the gloom.
“He said...” said an unfamiliar voice, rough from disuse, “he said to tell you that it was to stop you from pulling a vanishing act. To keep you here. He said the walls wouldn’t be enough.” The voice stopped, then cleared its throat again, as though speaking had been an effort.
“It?”
“He said you’d know what that meant.”
“Oh, this.” Mallory tapped the manacle – because that, he had realised soon enough, was what was wrapped around his wrist – with his fingernail. It tinged dully. “Figured.” He peered back into the gloom. “I don’t suppose you could tell me who ‘he’ is, do you?”
“The man.”
“Yes...”
“I don’t know his name. He’s the only one I’ve seen.”
“The only one of who?”
“Them.”
“Right.” Mallory sighed. “How about you stop me when I start going wrong?” He paused. The voice didn’t answer. Mallory took this as an invitation. “‘They’ brought you here, am I right? Just like ‘they’ brought me here.”
“You were bleeding.”
“No shit.” It was all he could do not to laugh, but he pulled back. “They brought me here, and one of... them... put something round my wrist and gave you that message for me. He didn’t tell you his name, but I’ll bet he seemed like he knew me.”
“Yes.”
“He had blond hair.”
“No. Dark.”
“Oh?” This took Mallory by surprise, but not for long. “And kind of a pointy face. Nose too long; cheekbones too sharp. Smile like a piranha.”
“I only saw him smile once.”
“Once?”
“As he closed the door. After they brought you.”
“That sounds about right.” Mallory blew out a long breath. He knew exactly who had brought him here.
It was Rimmon – and somewhere, in the back of Mallory’s head, one cog clicked into another, and gears started to turn.
He squinted into the darkness; his eyes just about adjusted enough to make out a hunched shape at the far end of the space. Not so much a room as a cell, and longer than it was wide. But whoever was at the other end was no angel – no Fallen either – and clearly meant him no harm. After all, he’d been wiping Mallory’s face with a damp cloth: cleaning the blood and the dirt away, and you didn’t do that to someone you wanted to hurt. Unless Rimmon had come up with a particularly new and interesting way to test his patience, of course, but Mallory doubted it. After all, why break the habit of a lifetime?
He did his best to sound friendly. He suspected he missed by a mile, but hoped he at least made it close to ‘non-threatening.’
“What about you? How long have they kept you here?”
“I don’t know. It’s always dark.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no...”
“No – I mean, why are you here?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to remember. I saw something. Something I don’t think I was supposed to see. I didn’t think it was real – not to begin with. But I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t... I don’t know. Maybe I did something...” The voice tailed off, although Mallory was sure he could still hear it whispering. He thought he caught the words ‘deserve it.’
“Well, it looks like we’re going to be in each other’s company for a while.” Mallory slid his feet out from under him, easing himself into a sitting position on the floor. “Might as well introduce ourselves properly.” He held up a hand in greeting, not knowing if the other man could see it. “I’m Mallory.”
“Toby,” came the reply.
“Nice to meet you, Toby.” And even as he said it, his heart sank. Because when it came to the Fallen, there were no coincidences.
THE BARKING CONTINUED for quite some time. It wasn’t helping Vin’s headache, but at least he knew where he was. His gut told him that Lucifer would only entrust one of the Twelve with holding prisoners right now. And, assuming Mallory was also somewhere nearby, it would have to be one of the older ones; not someone who’d been promoted after the angels had taken hell. He mentally ticked off a few names. The dogs really were the giveaway: it had to be Forfax. And that meant he was either somewhere near Forfax’s sleazy bar, or the Fallen had branched out into kennels. A mental image of Forfax – with his tuxedo and that ridiculous cane of his – hanging onto the leads of a dozen miniature dogs popped into Vin’s head, and despite himself he sniggered.
“Something amusing, Vhnori?” An unpleasantly familiar voice echoed around the cell and, startled, Vin looked around to see where it had come from. A small grille had opened in what he assumed was a door, and a pair of eyes were watching him from the other side. The light filtering in past them was dim, and somehow grubby, but it hurt his eyes all the same.
“Hello, you,” he said, as brightly as he could. “I was just thinking about you. Speak of the devil, right?”
“Don’t get cute with me.”
“Oh.” Vin sighed. “And I thought you liked me. I mean, you bring me to this lovely dungeon, and...”
“Vhnori...” The voice had changed. It was still the same, and yet, somehow, it was different. Vin didn’t need to see the red eyes blinking back at him from the far side of the door to know why.
“Been a while, Lucifer.”
“Has it? I couldn’t say. You see, you never were very memorable – even before they clipped your wings.”
“Open the door. I’ll give you something to remember me by.”
“Oh, really?” Lucifer threw back his head and laughed. It made Vin’s skin crawl. “You’re a brave little thing, aren’t you? Tell me, why do you insist on staying on the wrong side?”
“Like I said: open the door.”
“You could do great things working for me. You k
now that, don’t you? I could find use for someone with your spirit.”
“Funny – Michael said exactly the same thing to me. Almost word for word. Right after we kicked your arse the last time.”
“That’s just it. ‘Last time.’ What’s past is past, little Earthbound. And mark my words, that will be the last time. I’m offering you the chance to be more. More than just a foot soldier. More than a pawn. Better to reign...”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it before.” Vin yawned loudly, stretching his arms and his wings out to illustrate his point.
Lucifer snarled. But he did stop talking, and that was all Vin needed. He wove his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Was there something you actually wanted, Lucifer? It’s just... well, we kicked seven shades of shit out of your boys back at Michael’s place, and I’m kind of beat. Need my beauty sleep, you know?”
“They have abandoned you. Know that. The Archangels, the Descendeds... even that little half-breed. Where is your rescue? Where are they? Tell me that.”
“Okay, firstly: if you’d been listening, you’d have heard me say I’m trying to take a nap and you’re just out there, giving it all this...” Vin made a flapping-mouth gesture with his hand. “Secondly?” He sprang up and leapt at the door, wrapping his hands around the bars of the grille and pulling himself right up to the metal so he was eye-to-eye with Lucifer. “Secondly, who said anything about me needing a rescue?”
Lucifer’s eyes locked on to his, and he must have seen something he didn’t like, because he took a step back.
“You’ll regret this, Vhnori. I promise you that. You will regret this.” What started as another snarl became a high-pitched giggle... and the red of his eyes vanished, leaving just Forfax staring in through the bars. Vin uncurled his fingers and turned back to the corner he’d been sitting in.
Forfax’s voice followed him back across his cell. “He’s right: you’ll regret it. The tide’s turned and soon he’ll be back. And then what will you do?”
“Maybe then I’ll be able to get some fucking sleep!” Vin roared, his back still to the door.
He heard Forfax slam the hatch over the grille shut, heard his footsteps click-clacking away. Only when he was sure the Fallen had gone, when the sound of his shoes had faded into absolute silence, did Vin allow himself to sink back down into his corner, rocking quietly in the darkness.
