by Lou Morgan
“One of them thanked me. As he burned, he thanked me.”
“You were killing him. It’s probably the first mercy he’s seen since he Fell.” At last, he stepped back from the pit. “Don’t let it bother you.”
“Bother me? Compared to what? This?” She waved towards the mess on the floor of the pit. “Because this is taking ‘bothering me’ to a whole new level.”
Somewhere in the darkness, something growled.
“And that was what?” Alice asked, taking an involuntary step closer to Castor.
“Time we weren’t here.”
“Guard dog?”
“If only. Come on.” He skirted around the pit and towards the stacks of crates, with Alice close behind.
They threaded their way through the towers of boxes, and Alice couldn’t help but stop once or twice, listening for the growling again. It was still there, but it was faint – and, thankfully, getting fainter.
“You’re not going to tell me what that was?” she asked.
“Nope. Certainly not here, in the dark. You’ll thank me later.”
“If there is a later...” she muttered. Funnily enough, running face-first into Lucifer bothered her a whole lot less than unspecified animals growling at her in the dark.
At the end of the maze of boxes, they came to another stretch of concrete, and a door. Beside the door sat a heap of what looked like black binbags. It looked like someone had emptied a skip against the wall, letting the bags fall where they would; some had spilled their contents across the floor and each other.
In front of them, Alice saw what was unmistakably part of an arm, just lying there. Almost casually.
“I need to leave now,” she said.
“I don’t think this is the worst of it.” Castor’s grip tightened on his baton, and he tucked it behind him.
“Does it say more about you or about me that I knew you were going to say that?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he crept ahead and pushed the door open with the end of his baton.
He stepped through, fumbling for a light switch on the other side, and Alice felt them. She felt them before she saw them. She felt the pain and the fear and the hate... and it broke her heart.
There were cages lining the corridor. It stretched the full length of the warehouse; cramped, mesh-fronted cages.
And there were people in them.
Men. Women. Children.
Young and old; frightened and filthy and locked in cages in the dark.
They flinched as the lights burst into life overhead – some cowering back into their cages, some merely blinking at the strangers in the light.
“Who are they?” she asked Castor. He was turning from one row of cages to the other, a puzzled expression on his face.
“I don’t know.” One cage in particular had caught his eye, and he crouched down in front of it. There was a tiny, dirty bundle at the back of it. It didn’t appear to be moving. “Hey,” he said as softly as he could. “Hey there...”
The bundle moved. Not much, but it definitely moved.
“I’ve come to help. Will you let me help you?”
The bundle moved again.
“Can you keep a secret?” Castor leaned up to the mesh, hooking his fingers through.
A face appeared above the fabric at the back of the cage. It was a little boy. He couldn’t be more than five or six; his hair stuck up in a dozen different directions and his face was streaked with dirt. At first, he gazed blankly at Castor, who smiled in encouragement.
“I said: can you keep a secret?”
The boy nodded.
“Well, alright, then.” And in one movement, Castor tightened his fingers on the door and pulled, wrenching it free. He stood up, tossing it aside... and without taking his eyes from the little boy, he opened his wings.
It was slow, and it was deliberate, and all of them saw it. Everyone in the cages. They saw as Castor’s wings unfurled, the feathers stretching over one another. Clipped or not, they were the first angel wings these people had ever seen.
He opened his wings, and Alice realised that she could hear someone laughing... or not laughing, exactly, but giggling.
It was the boy.
Doing her best to extinguish the flames that still burned about her, she crouched in front of the now-open cage and held out her hand.
“My name’s Alice. What’s yours?”
He looked at her, and shook his head.
“That’s alright – you don’t have to tell me. Are you ready to come out of there?”
He nodded, and slowly began to crawl out. She reached in and helped him as much as she could, but he recoiled at her touch. She couldn’t blame him.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. This is my friend Castor. We’re here to get you out.”
The boy turned his face towards Castor, and the first thing he did was to reach for his wings.
Castor knelt down in front of him, rolling one of his wings forwards around his shoulder for the little boy to touch. He giggled again as his fingers brushed the feathers, and he smiled at Castor. After a moment, Castor rolled his wing back.
“So, you didn’t answer my question. Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes...” he said.
“That’s good. Your name. It’s Riley, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Alice raised an eyebrow, but Castor simply tapped his wrist. Zadkiel’s choir.
“Riley, do you see that door, right there?”
Riley turned his whole body to follow Castor’s finger, saw the door, and turned back. He nodded.
“I want you to go through that door, and straight through the warehouse on the other side. I don’t want you to look at anything. Can you do that?”
Another nod.
“There’s a big hole in the floor in the middle, so be careful you don’t fall. On the other side, there’s a big door and it’s open. As soon as you can see it, I want you to run for it. You run, you hear me? No matter what you hear, no matter what you see. You run for that door and you do not look back.”
Riley slid his hand into Castor’s.
“I’m afraid not. I have to help more people. But I want you to be the first one out, so they know the way to go. They’ll follow you.” He squeezed the child’s hand. “Can you be brave, and show them? Can you do that for me?”
There was a pause, and another nod – solemn this time.
“I thought so.” Castor slid his hand away from Riley’s and reached behind him. There was a faint snapping sound, and he produced a large, dirty-grey feather which he handed to the boy. “Here. Take this. It’ll help you to be brave.”
Riley eyed it for a moment, then closed his fist tightly around it – and just like that, he turned and ran for the door. The sound of his footsteps, fast and light, echoed through the warehouse, and Alice and Castor watched him fade into the dark.
“Now,” said Castor, rubbing his hands together, “Let’s do something about the rest of these people, shall we?”
The doors to the cages had started to rattle. Some were being shaken by the captives behind them; some were... not. Something was shaking them, something else. Something outside. The people locked inside were shouting; screaming. A few stayed silent.
“Let me,” said Alice. She had been looking at the cages while Castor talked to the boy. They didn’t look as though they had been built to withstand much by way of heat...
“Alice, if you get this wrong...”
“I won’t.”
“You’ll kill them all...”
“I won’t. I can do this. You’ll see.”
“Alright...” Castor took a step backwards, and raised his voice over the noise. “Everybody get back! We’re getting you out of here, but you need to trust us! Get right back. Cover your faces if you can...” He shot a glance at Alice, who tipped her head back and took a deep breath. She thought about the length of the corridor. The space between the cages. The wire mesh.
“Ready?”
> “Ready.”
“On three. One... two...”
Alice stretched out her arms on either side of her; slipping her fingers through the mesh on either side.
“Three.”
Alice closed her eyes, and the mesh burned. It burned in a moving wave, scorching its way down the corridor, filling the space with blinding red light. There was a scream from somewhere ahead of them, but no other sound but the fire.
And as suddenly as it had flared, it was gone.
The fronts of the cages had simply melted away, leaving their occupants frightened and, in some cases, a little scorched around the edges, but otherwise unharmed. Where the doors had been were jagged-edged holes, and rapidly setting silver puddles on the floor.
Castor didn’t wait.
“Everybody out! Out! Out now!” he shouted, and the prisoners leapt into life, scrambling past them and past one another. Several of them slowed as they passed; some stared at Alice with something between disbelief and fear, and more than one gazed open-mouthed at Castor’s wings.
As the last of them fled through the darkness of the warehouse, Castor nodded.
“It’s time we stopped hiding,” he said to Alice, and set off down the corridor.
SITTING ON THE floor between Mallory and Toby, and still trying to work out what he should do next, Vin heard something rattle. Frowning, he looked around, and after a while he had managed to narrow it down to either Mallory’s chain, or one of the fantastically unpleasant bits of metal Rimmon had strewn across the floor.
As the rattling got louder, and louder... and louder, he realised it wasn’t either of them.
It was all of them.
“Mallory,” he hissed, grabbing Mallory’s shoulder and shaking it. “Mallory!” There was no response. “Mallory, you jackass. Wake the fuck up! The cavalry’s coming....”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Pay the Piper
RIMMON RAN, AS fast as he could. His coat flared out behind him and his shoes slipped on the concrete floor, sending him skidding into a wall, but he didn’t let it stop him.
He ran and ran and ran, with only one thought on his mind.
They’re here.
He barely managed to stop before he ran into the door ahead of him, and slapped his hand on it three times by way of a knock. He didn’t wait for an answer, but threw himself through it.
There, Lucifer stood peering at his own frozen face. The eyes that should have been Gwyn’s shone red, reflected in the ice in which his body was locked. He traced a finger down the block, trailing it along the chains and the padlocks, and then – smiling – he lifted his finger to his mouth and licked it.
“Why am I still waiting?” he asked, and although his tone was light and breezy, it was hard to miss the menace in it. “Michael will be here any moment, and I’m nowhere near ready to greet my brother...”
“A few minutes,” muttered Gabriel from behind the block, where he was huddled with Xaphan and Forfax.
“Gabe... Gabe?” Lucifer rubbed his hands together. “A moment, if you would?”
Gabriel edged around the block, careful not to so much as brush against its surface. He stood in front of Lucifer, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
“You’ve only just joined us – and we couldn’t be more delighted to have you here – so I’ll let that little... faux pas slide. But from now on?” He lashed out with his fingers, scoring deep lines across Gabriel’s cheeks. “No-one tells me to wait. I tell you what to do. Am I abundantly clear?”
“Yes. You are.” Chastened, Gabriel hung his head.
“Good, good. Now, why are you standing around talking to me? You’re wasting time...”
Gabriel said nothing, and edged back round the block to where Forfax was raising his cane. The jewel on the top of it glittered in the light as he spun it around his hand, throwing fragments of rainbows onto their faces. The light sparkled and danced, and suddenly it was gone, the gem clouding over and turning black. Forfax held it steady, and all three watched it intently as it cracked across the top, the crack deepening and widening and opening... and inside, there was a cube.
Xaphan pulled a pair of tweezers out of his pocket and jabbed them into the decaying bauble, fishing the cube out. It could have been metal, although colours swirled across the surface. Xaphan held it up and they all nodded approvingly at it before he snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Gabriel unwrapped the roll of cloth he had been holding, and took out a slim rod. It had a groove at one end, and a flat disc at the other, and it resembled nothing so much as a key.
A broken key.
With a look of triumph, Xaphan held up the two pieces, one in each hand – and pressed the side of the cube into the groove at the end of the rod. There was the faintest of clicks, and the key was whole.
The room shook, and Lucifer leaned around the ice block, raising an eyebrow at them.
“Any time. Any time...”
Gabriel felt the chill of Lucifer’s gaze on his back, and he watched Xaphan pull a cloth out of a plastic bag beside his feet. The cloth oozed, dripping something thick and dark onto the floor as he wiped it over the palm of his hand.
“I think it’s time to show the angels that the world has changed... don’t you?” He grinned, showing too many teeth, and slapped the flat of his hand onto the surface of the ice.
Lucifer’s head snapped back, red eyes staring at the ceiling as the hand-print wept blood. All eyes except Lucifer’s were on it, watching... watching as the scarlet thickened, darkened and turned to rust – and was sucked into the ice. The mark grew fainter and fainter, fading fast... but behind it, thin red lines began to creep through the solid blue of the prison.
“This is it,” said Forfax, discarding his cane. It had served its purpose.
Xaphan wiped his hand clean. “This is it.”
THE WHOLE BUILDING was shaking by the time Alice and Castor cleared the corridor; it felt not unlike standing underneath a low-flying helicopter. Or six.
“Why aren’t they coming?”
“They already have.” Castor’s mouth set in a grim line. “They’re here.”
“So where are they?”
“Following orders.”
They pushed through a pair of metal swing doors and found themselves in another long room lit by emergency lighting. There were low counters running down it, splitting it into three... and there was that smell again. Sweeter, though, and mixed with something else. Bleach.
“Castor... where are we?”
“Kitchen.”
“Kitchen?”
“Kitchen.”
“Promise me you’re not going to turn on the lights?”
“Absolutely.”
They fumbled their way through in the near-dark, relying on dim green bulbs and flickering flames, and Alice was more grateful than she imagined possible when they reached the far end.
“I hate this,” she said to Castor. He stopped, and when she turned to him, all she could see was the shadow of his face.
“I know,” he said. “But it’s what we do.”
“You ever thought about changing career?”
“Sure. I became a copper, didn’t I?” There was something close to a laugh in his voice. “World of difference.”
“Castor...”
“Mmm?”
“I need to... I just... Look.” Alice cleared her throat. “I’m having a hard time being around you. You...”
“He died protecting me, Alice. He died for me. I can’t exactly put a lid on that... on how it feels.”
“I know. It’s...”
“Besides, you’ve not melted the roof. Or the floor. Or my face, so you’re doing fine. But point taken. We’ll move it along. Carefully. We don’t know where they are, or if they’re waiting for us.”
“They’re always bloody waiting for us,” Alice groaned.
There was an ear-shattering crash from somewhere in the building, and the floor beneath them shook. Alice looked at Castor, and Castor looked
back at her.
“Following orders.”
“WAKE UP. WAKE up. Wake up.” Vin was almost yelling into Mallory’s ear. “You great big...”
He froze at a sound in the corridor, pressing himself against the wall behind the door. Footsteps.
Rimmon was coming back.
Vin picked up his rope again, winding it around his fingers and letting the knotted end dangle. When Rimmon came to the doorway, he would swing it up and around the side of the door, and it should hit him in the face. Or the throat. Or possibly go straight over his head: Vin realised he had no idea how tall Rimmon actually was... Still, maybe he’d be lucky. And maybe Rimmon had the keys on him. And if neither of those things worked, he could always improvise... even if he’d have to face Mallory sulking about it afterwards.
The footsteps came closer, hurrying now. There was more than one set. Two, maybe? Three? The echo made it hard to be sure. But they were coming closer, and fast.
They approached the door, and stopped.
Took another step closer and, finding the door open, halted again.
They stepped into the doorframe... and Vin swung into action, throwing out his arm. The rope curled up and around the door, where it met what looked like a baton. It wound itself round the rod, and the knot grazed the door with a harmless clunk.
Vin stared at the baton poking around the edge of the door.
The rope started to smoulder, smoke spiralled up and into the air.
Now that was something Vin did recognise... and he stepped out from behind the door.
Alice and Castor, his baton still raised, stared back at him.
Without a word, Alice threw herself at him, hugging him tight. “You’re alive.”
“I don’t die easy. Not like this one...” Vin jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“No. He’s not...”
“He’s not. But it’s not for lack of trying.” He stood aside before she could push him out of the way, and Alice rushed over to Mallory.
“What happened?” She stared at him.
“We had a slight... disagreement.”
“What the hell about?”
“About whether or not his dying was an option.”
