Blood and Feathers

by Lou Morgan

  ALICE OPENED HER eyes.

  She was in a boat.

  This was mildly unexpected.

  Alice closed her eyes again.

  “ARE YOU AWAKE?” Something sharp nudged her ribs.

  “I am now,” she said, sitting up with a groan. The boat rocked alarmingly, and she clutched at the sides. “I feel like someone scraped out the inside of my head with a trowel.”

  “Close enough. Bad case of ‘forgetting what you came for.’ Don’t look surprised. It’s something of a specialty round here, and to be honest I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did. You’ve got some pretty good mojo working for you. But when you went down, you went like a stone. And now here we are, on the river. Or more specifically, here I am, taking you to the worst place I could possibly be going.”

  “Which is where, exactly?”

  “Right smack into the middle of hell. Look.”

  Alice peered over the edge of the rowing boat. They were on a wide river, flowing between two almost-identical rock plateaux. She looked from one to the other, and back again, but still couldn’t work out which one they had come from and which they were going to. The boat didn’t seem to be moving anywhere quickly, which wasn’t particularly helpful, but if she was forced to pick, Alice would have said they had come from the one on the right, and were going to the one on the left. Or maybe the other way round. While she was debating the near-imperceptible difference between the two, she let her hand drop over the side, trailing absently into the water. It prickled her skin, sending an itch shivering up the underside of her arm and into her spine. Her bones felt hot. She swallowed the feeling back down.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Abbadona, and she snatched her hand back up, just as something lunged out of the water after it. She tried very hard not to pay too much attention, but whatever it was, it was dark, slimy and had a lot of teeth. Even that, however, didn’t worry her nearly as much as the colour of the water. She held up her fingers and stared at them as they dripped thickly, darkly, redly into the boat.

  “You know,” she said without taking her eyes off them, “I think I can see why the angels don’t like you lot.”

  “Every angel who ever died. Fallen. Earthbound. Descended. They’ve made this river what it is.”

  “But what’s the point?”

  “What?” He was staring at her, his eyes wide and his mouth twisted. “What’s the point? The point, half-breed, is to remind you what sacrifices have been made. Some by us, some by them. The point is that you’ve been dangling your dainty little fingers in the blood of my brothers. The point is that this is what keeps hell moving, what keeps it working. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. And pain.”

  Staring at the river, she reached her hand towards it – and the fire was there, sparking across her fingernails. As the tips of her fingers brushed the surface, flames sprang up to meet them: four tiny pools of light that rose and fell on the darkness of the river, and Alice suddenly felt the wind on her face, felt a light settle on her. She caught the scent of the ice, of the cold and everything hidden inside it; she felt the fear and the pain and the loss and the anger, felt it boiling around her like a thunderstorm. And then, as Abbadona scrambled past her in the boat, cursing and trying to put out the still-burning spots on the river with his hands, Alice knew Mallory had been right: who else could the angels possibly have sent?

  THE BOAT CAME to rest against the shore. Alice had come through the forgetfulness. She had come through the fields of hell, through the past and the cold; through the ice and the doubt and the fear, and for the first time, she felt ready. She felt sure.

  “This is it,” Abbadona said, tying the boat to an iron post. “For the record, I don’t want to be here. Wasn’t part of the plan, wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Then why are you?” she asked, turning to face him.

  He met her gaze, then looked down at his feet. “Because I can’t let you go alone.”

  “Growing a conscience?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What, then? You’ve held up your side of the bargain, haven’t you?”

  “And then some. You’re not exactly an easy passenger, you know.”

  “Then...?”

  “Let’s just say I think I’m finally starting to see the big picture.”

  “You’re Fallen.”

  “Alice, even the damned can wish for hope. You: pulling this off, getting out of here – you’re mine. My last hope. You don’t just abandon your hopes on the riverbank.”

  “Coming from anyone else, that might be deep.”

  “I have hidden shallows.”

  He skipped out of the boat and stood on the shore. “They’ll be coming for you, for both of us. As soon as you set foot on the rock. They already know you’re here, they just don’t know where. But this is their ground. They own it. They built it. There’s nowhere to hide.”

  “So?” Alice stepped out of the boat. For a moment, she felt nothing. Just the cold and empty darkness, but then...

  It began with a single pinprick on the back of her neck. Just one, like a mosquito bite – and for a second, she was afraid she had made a mistake. But then she felt the warmth of the fire as it wrapped her in a second skin, smelled the flames as they spun around her... with every step she took, it burned brighter; hotter and higher, her feet leaving blazing marks in the stone as she walked.

  Abbadona jumped back, his face whiter than she had ever seen it.

  Behind them, the river of blood burst into flame, and Alice walked on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  New Golgotha

  MALLORY RAISED HIS head. “You feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  “That. Something... changed.” He watched a veil of dust skitter down the Gate.

  “Cold. I feel cold. And I’m getting sick of the death-stare whatsherface over there is giving me.”

  Vin pointed at Charon, who was watching them from inside the frozen waterfall with an expression that had settled somewhere between ‘cautious distrust’ and ‘total hatred.’

  Mallory glanced over at her and she scowled, retreating further back into the ice. He laughed. “I don’t think she’s very keen on our being here.”

  “Well, she’s going to really have something to complain about in a minute,” said Vin, smugly. “I made a couple of calls.” From somewhere nearby there came the sound of feathers moving against one another. Lots of feathers. “Really good reception down here, by the way.”

  “Is that so?” Mallory raised an eyebrow and hauled himself off the ground, turning to look at the passageway they had come through earlier.

  It was full of angels.

  “A couple of calls, you say?”

  “I had some spare minutes,” Vin shrugged. “And besides, nobody wants to miss this.”

  “Miss what, exactly?”

  “Come off it. We all know what’s going on. She works from the inside, you work from the outside... bam! We take them down.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re so sure of that. If you come up with a way to do any of it, you’ll let me know, won’t you?” He flapped his wings, and wandered towards the crowd of angels making their way towards them.

  “Now, you I wasn’t expecting to see here,” he said to the first angel he reached.

  Saritiel brushed her hair back behind her ears. “It takes more than brute strength to breach the walls of hell. It takes luck.”

  “So does poker. Wouldn’t you be better off making a nuisance of yourself at someone’s card game?”

  “I’m not here for you, Mallory,” she said.

  Mallory winked, and patted her shoulder as he walked on. “Don’t I know it...”

  THEY KEPT COMING; hundreds of them. Every Earthbound he had ever met seemed to be pouring through the opening and into the cavern, and it wasn’t long before the vast space began to feel quite crowded. It was noisy, too: the sound of a thousand angels; all jostling each other, calling to one another – shouting, laughi
ng, swearing... an army of them. An apocalypse of them.

  They smiled at him as they passed, one after another; called his name, slapped him on the back, tugged at the feathers of his wings... each and every one of them knew him, and they were all there for the same thing.

  “A couple of calls,” he muttered under his breath, but suddenly, he had hope again. It filled his head, his heart, until his chest felt altogether too small to contain it.

  “Choirs! Fall in!”

  Mallory’s voice echoed around the cavern, loud enough to make the Earthbounds nearest to him jump. The chatter that had filled the space died down immediately, replaced by a quiet shuffling. Angels filed past one another in silence, looking for other members of their choirs and falling into practiced rows. By the time Mallory had walked back to the Gate, with the exception of Vin, who stood in front of the Gate itself, every other angel stood somewhere in a neat column; silent, watching. Mallory stared at them all – then he heard a quiet voice behind him.

  “Just out of curiosity: now that you’ve got an audience, what are you going to say?” Vin asked.

  “Nothing as good as I might have done if I’d had a little notice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  They were still waiting. He sighed, and beat his wings, lifting him above their heads. Their eyes followed, fixed on him.

  “I haven’t seen some of you in a long time. A long time. Too long. Except you, Brieus,” he said, pointing at an angel with a shaved head. “I’m not sure forever’s long enough not to see you.” He winked, and there was muffled laughter, as someone elbowed the other angel in the ribs. Mallory waved his arm towards the Gate. “But you’re here now. You know who’s through there. You know what’s through there, and there isn’t a single one of you who needs me to tell you how this will go. If you cross to the other side, you might not come back. Some of you won’t. I don’t want that on my head. This isn’t a fight we can win; it isn’t a fight we should even start, but it’s Gabriel’s party, not mine.” A ripple of complaint spread back through the ranks at the mention of Gabriel, but Mallory shook his head. “I won’t, can’t, order you to follow me. I won’t even ask you to. But one thing I will say to you is this: I know why I’m here. Do you?”

  There was a stunned silence, and he dropped back to the ground with his wings folded behind him. Vin stared at him with wide eyes.

  “What was that?” he asked, quietly enough for only Mallory to hear.

  Mallory shook his head and half-smiled. “Just wait.”

  “Wait for what? Everyone to piss off again? If that was your idea of rallying the troops, mate, I hate to say it, but you really suck.”

  “You’ll see.” He went back to studying the Gate.

  THERE WERE VOICES behind him now: urgent voices, whispering voices, arguing quietly amongst themselves. And then one voice carried clearly over the crowd, from somewhere at the back.

  “What, sit this one out? And miss all the fun? Not bloody likely!” There were shouts of agreement and, suddenly, all the angels were cheering. The sound echoed off the Gate and filled the cavern like a cathedral.

  Mallory kept his back to them, and raised his eyebrows pointedly at Vin. “Told you.”

  “Bit of a gamble, wasn’t it?”

  “Call it an exercise in free will.” He stared up at the Gate again, taking another long gulp from his hipflask, which, if anything, had got even colder, turning the contents slow and syrupy. “Now we’ve just got to get through the Gate.”

  “About that... how exactly are you going to bring it down?”

  “I’m not,” Mallory said, pocketing his flask. “You are.” And without another word, he walked past Vin and was lost in the crowd.

  Inside her waterfall, Charon sneered, and vanished.

  “LOOK AT IT! A bullet’ll never get through that. They’re not stupid.”

  “We’re talking about the Fallen. Of course they’re stupid,” Brieus peered into the eye-sockets of a skull. “This guy must’ve been a looker, just get a load of those cheekbones.”

  “That’s a woman’s skull, Brieus.”

  “Even better. Hellooo.”

  “Do you think you might like to... I don’t know, focus, perhaps?” Mallory said.

  Brieus rolled his eyes and walked back to the others. “Says mister ‘I-can’t-ask-you-to-come-with-me.’ Nice touch, by the way. Couldn’t have done a better job myself.”

  “You’re right. You couldn’t.”

  Mallory slotted a new magazine into his Colt and aimed it at the middle of the Gate. Casually, he squeezed the trigger... over and over and over again until the entrance to hell rang with gunfire, and his gun finally made an empty clicking sound. “Go check if you want: it won’t even have nicked the paintwork. Like I said, not stupid.”

  “That’s not possible,” said Vin, and he hurried over to the Gate. Mallory and Brieus watched him as he hesitated, then ran his hands over the bones. When he turned back to face them, he looked disappointed, and a little sick. “First of all, that thing is grim. Just grim. I know they’re twisted and everything, but...”

  “We get it. Move on.”

  “Not a scratch. How’s that even work?”

  “I told you: they’re not stupid. They built it to keep us out, remember.”

  “Out of bones. Bones.”

  “Yes, Vin. Out of bones.”

  “Lots of them.”

  “Which should prove that they’re determined, if nothing else.” Mallory looked thoughtful. “And it’s the bones that are doing it.”

  “How so?” Brieus asked, slapping Vin – whose face had turned an interesting shade of greenish grey – on the back.

  Mallory shrugged, tucking his gun back under his jacket. “No idea. But it has to be the bones. Just look at it. They could have built it out of ice, out of rock... anything. They don’t use it to go in and out. It has no purpose other than to stand between us and the Fallen. If they’ve used bones, they’ve used them for a reason.”

  “Maybe it’s just to give the willies to the more... sensitive among us.” Brieus laughed, and Vin pulled a face. He followed it with an obscene gesture, which both Mallory and Brieus chose to ignore.

  “If you ask me, you’re spending too long on the wrong question. Who cares why it’s made of bone? Your gun doesn’t even dent it, fine. So what will?”

  “It’s not the wrong question, Brieus. You’re just not looking at it the right way. It’s not a case of asking what will break the bone. It’s a case of asking what happens if it isn’t built of bone any longer?”

  Brieus stared back at Mallory, then took a slow step back.

  “At the moment, what I’m really wondering is whether all that drink hasn’t finally gone to your head. You can’t change it, Mallory. It is what it is. Unless you’ve got some way to turn it to marshmallow and have us all waltz right through. Which would be sticky, to say the least.”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is, though, does it? It only matters what it isn’t.”

  “Which is still completely irrelevant, because you...” Brieus tailed off as he followed Mallory’s gaze. He was looking at Vin, now sitting on his heels but looking a little less ill. “Oh. Ohh.”

  “Now do you see?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Says who?”

  “It’ll never work.”

  “And if it doesn’t, then you have my full permission to say ‘I told you so.’ But I don’t think you’ll get the chance.” He crouched down next to Vin. “What do you say?”

  Vin looked back over his shoulder at the Gate. “How far up do you think it goes?”

  “I can take a look, if you want...”

  “Nah. It’s fine.” He stood up and stretched, cricking his neck first one way then another and opening his wings. “I’ll go.” He shuddered theatrically, and with a flap of his wings he was gone, soaring up above them.

  Brieus was watching Ma
llory carefully. “It could kill him.”

  “It could. It won’t.”

  “Even so...”

  “Vhnori is perfectly capable of making his own choices, Brieus.”

  “But it’s your judgement he’s trusting. Which is more than some of us would in his place.”

  “Do you have a problem, Brieus? Because if you do, I’m happy to settle it right here. Now.”

  Mallory’s voice was cold as he stripped off his jacket and dropped it by his feet, rolling up his sleeves.

  Brieus jumped back to a spot he thought was out of reach. “Look, Mallory, I’m on your side, alright? I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. None of us would. All I’m saying is that you’d better be sure, because if this is what it boils down to, and it goes wrong...” He left the sentence hanging in mid-air. They both knew what that would mean.

  Mallory scooped up his jacket and slipped it back over his shoulders, hiding a shiver. “If this goes wrong, taking care of Vhnori will be the least of my problems.”

  VIN LANDED WITH a thump, several minutes later. He had gone as high as he dared and got precisely nowhere. The top of the Gate was still far out of sight by the time his wings gave out. It wasn’t often that he missed his old wings, but this was one of those times. Of course, what they could really have done with was a Descended – even Gwyn, if absolutely necessary – but they were keeping themselves predictably clear of the whole business. Once the Gate was down, it would be another story. Then, he wondered whether even the Archangels would make an appearance... once it was done, and ready for the taking. He sighed. Same old story. Still, if this didn’t count towards getting back into their good graces, he didn’t know what would. And besides, he was sure he’d seen Saritiel somewhere in the crowd earlier.

  “Well?” said Mallory, not looking up from his notebook.