by Lou Morgan
“Michael?” Her voice bounced back to her. “Michael!”
The fire in the walls blazed higher, and her head throbbed harder and harder.
“Michael...”
There was a sound somewhere behind her: a sound like whispering voices, and Alice knew who was there before she turned and saw the black wings.
“Come with me,” said Adriel, and the world pitched and spun and went dark.
WHATEVER ADRIEL DID to get her out of the library, it did not help Alice’s head. In fact, not only did it not help, it made her want to throw up, which wasn’t exactly a step in the right direction. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, slowly, driving out each breath like she meant it. When she was relatively confident she wasn’t going to be sick on anyone’s shoes, she opened her eyes.
She was in the room at the top of Mont Saint-Michel again – the room with the throne. And through the windows, the mount was burning. Flames raged across the roofs, along the walls, through the streets below; they bounced from building to building. Somewhere, a bell was ringing wildly, and Michael sat on the dais at the foot of the throne, his head in his hands, as he wept.
Alice glanced at Adriel, who shook his head. “Zadkiel is dead,” he said gently.
“Zadkiel.” Alice thought she must have misheard, but Adriel nodded. “Oh,” she said, and stared at the floor.
“Zadkiel is dead, and we are betrayed,” murmured Michael, wiping his hand across his face as he gathered himself together.
“You knew that, though. The betrayed bit, at least.”
“But now I know by whom.”
“And that would be...?”
“Gabriel.”
“You’re kidding me.” Alice gaped at him. Gabriel?
“Gabriel murdered Zak, and has betrayed us all.” Michael turned his back on Alice and Adriel and stared out of the window, down over the roofs where his grief burned out of control.
“You must act, Michael. You know you must.” Adriel stepped forward.
“There’s still time.”
“There is not.” Adriel gazed sternly at Michael, who looked over his shoulder at him.
“Time for what, exactly?” asked Alice. The pain in her head made sense now: it was Michael. Michael hurt. And the only way she was going to make it stop was to help him.
Neither angel responded to her question.
“Has he taken Lucifer’s body?” Adriel asked, now sounding anxious.
“What do you think?”
“Then there is no time at all.”
“Hmm.” Michael looked thoughtful.
“Michael?” Adriel had started rubbing his wrist. It was an odd gesture, and not one Alice had ever seen him make before.
Michael wheeled back to face them. “They have his body. They have the Morningstar and they have the key to his prison. All they need is blood. And that, they’ll have soon enough.” He strode past Alice and towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Adriel shouted after him.
Michael’s voice floated back up the stairs to them. “To finish what has been started.”
“ALICE. THERE ARE things you need to know.”
“You think?”
“Alice...” Adriel had slipped into his ‘remember who you’re talking to’ tone.
“How long do we have?”
“‘We’?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Oh, come on. Just for once, can you forget all the mystery and tell me?”
Adriel frowned, and fiddled with his wrist. “It isn’t as simple as that. There are things which...”
“...which I won’t understand? Fine. Make it easy, or skip them. Tell me what I need to know.”
“What you need to know? In simple terms, Gabriel has betrayed Michael. He has taken Lucifer’s body and has run to the Fallen. They have, we believe, the means to restore him.”
“And when you say ‘restore,’ you mean ‘stuff his mind back in his body.’”
“More than that. It won’t simply reunite him. It will restore him. He will become an Archangel again...”
“...with everything that entails.” Alice finished the sentence for him, and shook her head. “Well, who thought up the plan that lets that happen? It’s pretty bloody stupid, isn’t it?”
“There is always a reason, Alice. In this case, it was a failsafe: if the time ever came when Lucifer had to be destroyed, this was the only way it could be done. But perhaps we should keep to the more relevant points.”
“Whatever.” Alice waved a hand dismissively. She was fairly sure she could guess what he was going to tell her next: Lucifer was levelling back up to Archangel, and with Gabriel’s defection, the sides had gone from ‘angels versus Fallen’ to ‘angels versus Fallen-plus-two-Archangels’.
“Lucifer once had a choir, Alice. If he’s restored...”
“His choir have to answer to him. This just gets better and better.”
“His choir will have to answer to him...”
“Oh, now you really are taking the piss. You? Seriously?”
“Wheels are in motion which I cannot stop. Lucifer will rise, and he will call and I will have no choice but to answer.”
“Wait.” Alice held up her hand and Adriel blinked at her with his black eyes. She was almost afraid to ask, but she was going to do it anyway. “Lucifer had a choir. What did he control?”
“You already know.” Adriel hung his head.
“I do.” Alice felt as though someone had pulled the floor sideways from beneath her.
Lucifer had been the Archangel of Death.
“It’s his throne. The mercy seat, they call it.” Adriel nodded at the chair on the dais. “Michael took it, as a reminder.”
“What about you? How did you...”
“I did not follow Lucifer.”
“That’s pretty obvious.”
“I seconded Mallory.”
“You what?”
“When Mallory told Michael of Lucifer’s plans, I was his second. As Mallory betrayed him, so did I. And in many ways, my betrayal was worse: I rebelled against my commander.” He scratched at his wrist again, and pulled back his sleeve. There on his arm was a sigil – but unlike the others Alice had seen, which looped and swirled, Adriel’s was nothing more than a circle, clear against the pale skin of his arm. “Endless, you see. No beginning and no ending. Eternal.” He rubbed it thoughtfully. “Lucifer liked it so much, he kept on using it.”
“The brands!” The white brands worn by all the Fallen around their wrists, like shackles. The brands which bound their minds to Lucifer’s, just as the sigils bound the choirs.
“He took what was good, and he corrupted it,” Adriel said. “It is in his nature, perhaps. He is the darker side of death: rot and decay and fear and despair. He is the cold. He is destruction, and he is oblivion.”
“And now he has an electric psychopath as his wingman...” Alice chipped in – and was surprised to see Adriel almost smile. Not quite, but close enough.
“Michael needs you. After Seket... after your mother... there were no more Travelers. No more angels bridging the divide between human and angel. It was seen as too much of a risk. And so they forget, little by little. The angels forget. They forget what it is to have mercy, to have hope. They forget that there is more to the world than their war.”
“I don’t think they forgot.” Alice was surprised by how bitter she sounded. “I don’t think they ever cared.”
“They did. They do still. They just need to be reminded what it is they’re really fighting for. It isn’t to win, and it isn’t to defeat the Fallen. It’s for them. For you.” He pointed at the window – or rather, the world beyond it.
“Well, that’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it?”
“Because they don’t remember what it’s all for, Alice. Remind them.”
“Me?”
“You. You, the half-born who fights against the Fallen. The child who walked into hell with a smile on her face...”
“I think
that’s a slight exaggeration...”
“I have seen you, Alice. I have seen who you are. I know who you are, even if you don’t. The half-born who wants so much to be one thing or another that she forgets she is the best of both.” He smiled this time, but his smile was distant – as though he was listening to a voice Alice couldn’t hear. “Help them. Help Michael. Help Mallory. Help them all. They’ll need it, though they may not thank you for it.” He drew away from her. “It has been my honour to serve as the Angel of Death. Not always painless, but a privilege. I was bound to serve only my purpose, answering to no-one, but I fear I was impartial when I should have been otherwise, and now I must be partial when I would be not.” He paused, and half-smiled again. “Tell Michael the apprentice is ready.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means he will rise and I must Fall. Not that it matters: with Gabriel gone, we are all as good as Fallen. I wonder, though, with Zak dead... who will remember us?”
“I will,” said Alice, and she looked straight into his black eyes.
“I hope so,” he said, sadly. And he nodded once, and then he was gone, leaving Alice alone and baffled in the throne room.
“Well, that’s all just marvellous, isn’t it?” she said, and sat down on the floor, trying to work out exactly what had just happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Making Monsters
TOBY HAD BEEN slumped in the chair, as far as Mallory could make out, ever since Rimmon left. Certainly, he hadn’t heard any movement from the other side of the room. Not that he had a lot of choice – the Fallen had, ever thoughtful, apparently left him tied there.
“Toby?”
Nothing.
“Hey, Toby. Are you in there?”
Nothing.
“It’s just, well, I’ll be honest. This floor’s starting to get uncomfortable, and you’re not being very fair. I think, seeing as I’m basically your guest, that the least you could do is stop bogarting the chair...”
There was a soft hiccuping sound. It might have been sobbing, it might not.
“So, what do you say? You want to let me have a turn?”
“I would,” came the answer, in a voice that was far too thick for comfort, “but my hands, so to speak, are tied.” The hiccuping sound again, and with a sigh of relief, Mallory realised it was laughter. Or something like it. Maybe he was a fighter after all.
“How are you doing?” he asked, more serious now.
“How do you think?” There was no sarcasm there. It was a simple question.
“I think... not so good.”
“You’d be right.” There was a groan from across the room, and the sound of the chair creaking, of the rope straining, as Toby sat up. “Mallory, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You know this guy, don’t you? The way you talk...”
“I know him. We go back a long way.”
“What did I do?”
“I’m not sure I follow.” Mallory was glad it was dark: it meant Toby couldn’t see the look on his face.
“To deserve this. What did I do?”
“Take my advice: questions like that are rarely helpful.” Mallory chewed on the edge of one of his fingernails. “Particularly not when you’re dealing with Rimmon.”
“How do you know him? You’re not friends, are you.” It wasn’t a question, and Toby’s voice cracked as he spoke. At that moment, Mallory wished more than anything that he could reach him. But he could not. He’d tried, and he’d failed. Repeatedly.
“You don’t want to know.”
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t ask, would I? Besides, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.” He coughed, and there was a wet sound as though he had spat on the floor – although Mallory suspected it was something far less pleasant than that.
“It’s a long story...”
“I’ve got time.”
Mallory stifled a cold laugh. He had a feeling Toby had far less time than he imagined. “I’ll tell you a story instead, how about that? A long time ago, there was a village. Out in the middle of nowhere, a real backwater. They grew their crops, they kept their animals, they occasionally went crazy and sold some surplus at the market in the nearby town. But pretty much, they kept to themselves. That was how it went there: how it had gone, and always would go – until a baby was born beneath the comet.
“They weren’t exactly what you’d call ‘enlightened,’ so the boy was regarded with deep suspicion. Any day, as he grew, they expected him to sprout horns or hooves or something equally stupid, but he never did, so their suspicions began to fade. After all, portents came and went and there was no saying that a sign in the night sky over one village wasn’t meant for the people of the next. The kid had the right number of fingers, the right number of toes and when – by his twelfth year – a tail or a forked tongue were both still conspicuously absent, they decided that he was in the clear. Which was, as it happened, a year too soon.
“It was a spring morning, early, and one of the farmers went out to check on his animals in the field. He found every single one of them dead: their skins scorched, their eyes burned out, the grass where they had fallen yellowed and dried. Like they’d been hit by lightning. But the strangest thing about it was that they’d all fallen facing the same way: towards the house where the comet-child, as he was known, lived. So the farmer decided to pay him and his mother a little visit...
“They ducked her. Tied her to a chair and ducked her in the river. They made her son stand on the riverbank and watch while she drowned. Of course, that proved that she wasn’t a witch, so all eyes turned to him. And then he did the most extraordinary thing: he fell to his knees and begged their forgiveness, and when he held up his hands, they were full of lightning. All round his head, and in his hands and in his eyes and his mouth... everywhere. They ran, afraid for their lives. All of them ran – all but one.
“He was a stranger to the boy, and still he did not run. Instead, he took him away and taught him that what he had was a gift, and that he could learn to control it. The boy tried, but he was frightened. Too frightened, perhaps. And the man was a terrible teacher, which didn’t help. They fled to the woods, and there they hid: living off whatever came their way, and every once in a while, the man would go off poaching to supplement their larder, or gambling – and thieving – to keep their purse filled.
“It was a day like that, a day in the winter when there was frost in the trees and smoke in the air, that the boy met a devil. A devil who mixed just enough truth with his lies to make the boy believe. To make him doubt everything that the man had told him, to make him afraid: afraid of his past, afraid of his future, afraid of himself – and more than anything, afraid of the man who had tried to save him.
“And so he left with the devil, and when the man returned from the market, he found he was alone. The boy was lost.”
There was silence.
Then: “That was a weird story.”
“Was a bit,” Mallory said with a shrug. “Sorry about that. Probably a bit bleak, now I think about it.”
“A bit bleak? You could say that.”
“You didn’t specify cheerful, did you?”
“I’d have thought it was obvious!” Toby sounded indignant, and despite himself, Mallory smiled. It was working.
“Fine. You want cheerful, then you’re going to have to do the talking, I’m afraid.”
“Fat lot of good you are, mate.”
“I’m all ears.”
VIN GROANED AS he sat back, finally dropping his hands. The hinges were, as far as he could see, done. Just as well, because he was so tired he could barely move. Turning metal to stone – even old, rusty and generally knackered metal – was clearly more energy-intensive than he had imagined. On the plus side, old, rusty and generally knackered metal made for uneven stone, riddled with fault lines. It made it weak.
And that could only be a good thing.
All he had to do now was
wait.
“SO, THIS GIRL. How did you meet her?” Mallory asked. Toby’s definition of ‘cheerful’ seemed to focus almost entirely on the description of a woman. He was quite clearly besotted, and listening to that wasn’t exactly Mallory’s definition of fun. He missed his flask. More than he missed his flask, he missed his guns – because if nothing else, he could at least shoot himself in the head if he sensed another description of Little Miss Perfect heading his way. More troubling, however, was the fact Toby had stumbled over several words. Words which shouldn’t have caused a five year-old any problems.
“Work. She works in the office.”
“And that would be where?”
“The undertaker’s. I work out back. I’m training, you know? Learning to run funerals and that.”
“Undertaker.” Mallory felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach as everything he’d feared was confirmed. Just this once, why couldn’t it be a coincidence? he thought.
“It’s a good job. People think it’s...” Toby tailed off again and Mallory’s attention snapped back to the cell, but then Toby carried on. “Are you alright? You just sounded a bit... off.”
“Your boss. He wouldn’t happen to be called Andrew, would he?”
“Mr Langham? You know him?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Mallory groaned inwardly. “And god help me, because I can’t quite believe I’m saying this... but that... girlfriend of yours. Alice, yes?”
“You know Alice?” Toby’s voice perked up considerably.
“Oh, yes,” Mallory mumbled. No such thing as a coincidence, was there; not here, not now. Not ever. Click-click-click went the cogs in his head.
Toby was talking again – animated now. He was telling Mallory how accident-prone Alice was; how twitchy. How sad she seemed. How alone. How he knew that all she needed was someone to take care of her...
“You ever think she might be able to take care of herself?”
Toby snorted, which immediately set him off into a coughing fit. “I thought you said you knew Alice. She couldn’t take care of a stick insect, let alone herself!” He coughed again – a damp, unpleasantly sticky sound – and moaned. They were done talking for the time being, by the sound of it, and Mallory rested his head back against the wall. How could Toby have Alice so very wrong? Thinking that she needed taking care of? She was more than capable of taking care of herself; he’d seen her.
