by Lou Morgan
The puddle of blood.
The flames gradually died, leaving her breathless and aching and feeling like she’d been hit across the back of the head with a blunt instrument. It was while she was glaring at the brick on the floor that she spotted the newsagent across the road, broom in hand, staring at her. She smiled, and pointed to the air in front of her. “Wasp,” she said loudly, hoping that was a good enough explanation for the mad hopping he’d just seen.
And now, here was Toby asking where she’d been.
Good question. Good question.
“Well, Toby. Here’s the problem. I’m actually not quite what you think: I’m half angel, on my mother’s side. And she was in hell, and the devil possessed her and it’s a whole big thing. And then I came to work here – and did you know that your boss is actually the Angel of Death? – and I kind of got in a fight with a couple of Fallen angels and got seven hells kicked out of me, so the boss said I should take a couple of days. You know, just until the swelling went down. How’re you doing?”
She could say that. But it probably wouldn’t end well. So instead she mumbled something about a stomach bug, and went back to opening the post which had built up over the last few days. Adriel, it seemed, didn’t do post.
“I thought we were, you know, going out or something?”
“We were. Are. Will. Promise.”
“It’s fine, really. I just thought if you wanted to change your mind or something...”
“I promise I did not take a couple of days’ sick leave just to avoid you. There. Make you feel better?”
“Much. Cheers.” Toby visibly relaxed and picked up a handful of envelopes, slicing them open one at a time with his finger and handing them to Alice.
“How is it where you live?”
“Huh?” She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, other than with ‘messy.’
“The riots.” He nodded towards the window. On the other side, a man with a dustcart and a broom was fighting a losing battle with the litter blowing around. It didn’t look like he was even going to contemplate the rest of the debris.
“Oh. We seem to be okay. It’s pretty quiet where I am. And I don’t live right on the street, so...”
“Lucky. The shop below my mum’s flat got firebombed or something.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Scary, though. What’s the world coming to? It’s like it’s all going to hell.”
“Mmm.” Alice stared at a bill, and then concentrated very hard on dropping it into a filing tray. He was right: the world was going to hell. He just didn’t understand how right he was. And that was the way it was going to stay.
Despite Toby’s cheerful – and constant – chatter (particularly now he’d been reassured that no, she hadn’t been avoiding him) the mood was oppressive. And for an undertaker’s office, that was saying something. The usual calm and quiet of the office felt claustrophobic, itchy and unsettled. Outside, with the exception of the occasional policeman or pedestrian, the street stayed deserted. With the road closed, there was no traffic, and the garishly striped police tape wound between the lampposts kept most of the passers-by at bay. The sky overhead was a leaden grey, with clouds that hadn’t seemed to move all day.
There were no clients that morning, and no phone-calls, but Alice had plenty of catching up to do anyway, filing and sorting and tidying paperwork that she was absolutely sure hadn’t been in the desk drawers before she’d gone off. Apparently, it wasn’t only post that Adriel didn’t do.
She had just lifted another bundle of invoices and receipts out of the top drawer when her fingers brushed against something soft in the middle of the pile. Riffling through the papers, she slid the top half of the stack off to one side... and there, sitting on the paper, was a feather. It was almost as long as the sheets of paper it hid among, and it was white. This was no Earthbound’s feather: it had come from the wings of a full-blown angel. A Descended, there was no doubt about it; but whose was it? And what was it doing in her desk?
As she was sitting, staring at it, she heard a polite cough from beside her, and looked up, startled. So engrossed had she been that she hadn’t noticed Adriel appear alongside her.
“Alice? A word, if you would?”
“Hypotenuse.”
“I’m sorry? I don’t...”
“You said ‘a word.’ That’s a word.”
“Ah. Humour. Yes.”
“Never mind. What’s up?”
“I think, perhaps, it would be wise for you to go home.”
“What? But I just...”
“I don’t think you understand. This is not to do with you. It’s to do with them.” He pointed to the door with a long, slender finger. “There’s trouble coming.”
“Fallen? They’re coming? Here?”
“Why not? The riots are, broadly speaking, their doing. They have watched them build and build, and they have been there through them all. This one will be no different, and it will happen right outside the door. You shouldn’t be here.” He saw her open her mouth to reply and shook his head, raising his hand to stop her. “I said: this is not to do with you, per se. This is about my responsibility, on every level. You are part of my staff, and I am responsible for your safety. I made a promise...”
“A promise?”
“A promise which is none of your business, but which is a promise nevertheless.”
“And if I don’t want to go?”
He shrugged. “Of course, that would be your choice...”
“What about you?”
“Me?” He seemed genuinely taken aback by her interruption.
“You. Where will you go?”
“To work, Alice. To work.”
ALICE WAS STILL trying to decide what to do when she saw the first police van. It drove up the road slowly, trundling past the wreckage. It was another riot van, with black metal guards across the windows. “Well, that can’t be a good sign,” she said to no-one in particular. Should she go, she wondered? Adriel wanted the office empty, but on the other hand, he’d as good as said that the Fallen were coming. And if they were coming, then how could she run? He was trying to protect his staff: after all, he’d said they were all normal. Human. But she wasn’t, was she? She stared out of the window at the van, watching as the doors swung open and a dozen police officers jumped out, already half in their riot gear. They held round perspex shields and black helmets. One of them – a tall blond – carried a baton, which he swung experimentally... almost hitting one of his colleagues in the process. “That definitely can’t be good,” she muttered.
“What’ve you seen?” Toby was walking down the corridor from the kitchen. He had changed out of his dark suit, and was now wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a pair of tatty white trainers. He leaned around her to peer out of the window, and she caught the smell of hair gel. That was the thing about people – they smelled like people. Angels smelled... different.
“Oh,” he said when he spotted the van. “Yeah, that’s not good.” As they watched, another van ground to a halt behind the first... and another. “Not good at all.” For the first time, it occurred to Alice that this was really happening.
She was relatively cavalier about the Fallen, but this was something else. The Fallen were other, somehow; set apart from the real world. The Fallen were hell and battles and the stuff of nightmares – and despite the fact she was working for Adriel, despite the fact she’d seen them on the streets herself, knowing they were coming here, and were in the day-to-day world and trying to bend it to their own will... it was wrong. It was frightening.
A sudden pressure on her hand made her look down. Without her realising it, her hand and Toby’s had tangled together, their fingers intertwined. She was about to pull away when it dawned on her that he didn’t seem to have noticed either. And if he hadn’t noticed, it wasn’t like he’d done it on purpose, was it? And he was as afraid as she was, more so, even. She could feel it. So they stood there, hand in hand, watching the polic
e lines form right outside the window, amid the bricks and the glass and the wreckage.
And then they heard the shouting.
It came from somewhere out of sight: voices raised in rage and hate and nothing more. It wasn’t a battle chant, it wasn’t a cheer. It was a howl, empty and hollow and furious. And Alice had heard something like it once before, echoing through the lower levels of hell.
Toby’s fingers tightened around hers.
There were footsteps then – Adriel, hurrying back out of the office with a stony expression, and looking as close to an angel as Alice had ever seen him; his wings barely concealed in a shadowy haze around his shoulders. But he looked through her, and spoke to Toby. “You need to leave. Now. Go.” At the far end of the corridor, the back door swung open.
The voices got louder.
“Come on!” Toby tugged on Alice’s hand, but found her utterly immovable.
“I... can’t,” she said, barely recognising the voice that passed her lips.
“What?” Toby turned and stared at her.
“I need to stay.”
“You need to what?”
“I have to stay. I can’t explain. I just... I have to.”
“Are you crazy? I mean, really? You want to stay. Don’t you know what’s coming? Five minutes and it’s going to be a fucking warzone out there.”
“You should go.”
“Without you? Not a chance.”
“Toby!” Alice snapped. “Go. Just go. I’m not going to explain myself to you. I barely even know you, and you certainly don’t know me. So whatever you think this is,” she gestured to the space between them, “you can guess again. Now just leave me alone, alright?”
She saw the anger flash across his face before he could hide it, but she felt it all the same, boiling under her skin just as fiercely as it did under his. She had hurt him.
She felt his fingers slacken with horrible deliberation and pull away from hers. Adriel, framed in the doorway, watched but said nothing.
There was silence inside, rising chaos outside; shouting, the sound of running footsteps and the rhythmic beat of the police batons on shields.
Toby took a step back and looked her up and down. She felt his gaze travel every inch of her, and she hated it. He looked so coldly at her, this man who only a moment before had held her hand in his. Then he shook his head once and his lip curled into a half-sneer... and without another word he turned and was gone. The back door slammed behind him.
“Interesting approach,” said Adriel.
Alice swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“And you...?”
“I’m fine. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“On your own head be it, Alice.”
“I’m a big girl, thanks.”
SHE TURNED BACK to the window and looked out – and there, on the far side of the street, half-hidden behind a shattered bus shelter and watching her, was a man with black hair and dark-ringed eyes and a white brand around his wrist.
Rimmon.
ADRIEL OPENED THE door, and the sound of shouting and jeering grew louder. He sighed, and suddenly looked sad.
“You pushed Toby away to keep him safe,” he said. “But at what cost? What cost to you, and what cost to him?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. All our choices... all your choices, they matter.”
“I lost enough people I care about to the Fallen. I don’t want to lose any more.”
“‘People you care about’?” The corner of Adriel’s mouth twitched.
“You didn’t hear me say that.”
“My lips are sealed.”
The sound of batons on shields was almost deafening now, and the street was suddenly full of people – running, walking, jumping – their faces covered with scarves and hoods. Adriel slipped out of the door.
A bottle smashed on the pavement outside: the burning rag stuffed into its mouth falling clear and smouldering harmlessly on the ground.
She had to go too, didn’t she? It was where she belonged, after all – so much more there than in an office. Her eyes fixed on the crowd, Alice followed Adriel through the door, leaving it open behind her.
As she passed, the rag on the pavement burst into bright orange flames.
AS SHE LOST herself among the bodies, the office’s back door opened and Toby ran in.
“I don’t care, alright. It’s mental out there and I’m not leaving y...” He tailed off, seeing the door swinging open, and Alice vanishing into the mob.
“Alice! Alice!” He ran to the front door, gripping the sides of the frame and screaming her name. She didn’t stop: in fact, he could barely see her – only a flash of her jacket here, the top of her head. His voice was just one among many.
She didn’t hear him. She didn’t want him.
But he couldn’t leave her.
Shaking his head and against his better judgement, Toby turned the collar of his jacket up and plunged into the riot after her.
A WAVE OF NOISE swallowed Toby whole. The road had become a corridor of bodies: colliding with one another; dancing around one another, arms aloft, faces hidden behind black and white patterned scarves. A woman with long blonde hair had climbed onto the ruins of a car and was waving a child’s doll, its blazing hair dripping molten plastic on the people below as its face twisted grotesquely. The woman laughed as she threw the burning doll into the crowd.
Someone nearby was screaming; as Toby staggered through the crush of bodies, he saw a man – a kid, really – lying on the ground. Blood was pouring out of a gash in his thigh, and his face was a pale shade of grey. There were dark hollows under his eyes. It was the young woman crouched beside him who was screaming, a brick in her hand.
Jeers from somewhere behind him made Toby look away. The crowd had parted around a man in a crumpled suit. He had a phone in his hand; he’d been filming the mob, and the mob had turned on him.
The first missile landed at the man’s feet and shattered: a glass bottle. The second clipped his knee, forcing him to step back. The third hit him in the side of his face.
As he fell, the baying crowd reared back before collapsing in on him like a pack of animals.
In his mind’s eye, Toby saw himself plunging through them, pulling them aside until he reached the poor bastard at the centre; hauling him to his feet and dragging him out... getting him to the police, to an ambulance, to safety, to anywhere but here.
But Toby didn’t move. He stood right where he was. He heard the soft, sickening sound of flesh on flesh; of bricks and bones, of the mob laughing as they broke their prey... and he didn’t move. He couldn’t.
It was the thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud of batons on shields that pulled him out of his stupor.
Turning his back on the horror in front of him, Toby began frantically scanning the crowd for Alice. Jostled from every direction by the bodies crammed around him, he looked in vain for her face. He fought to stay upright, to not be swept along by the mob.
He was still searching as the first canister of tear-gas sailed over his head in a graceful arc and landed twenty feet behind him with a clatter and a whoosh.
Still the heartbeat of the riot sounded above the screams and the shouts and the chants and the shattering of windows.
And beneath his feet, beneath the feet of the world, unseen and unheard and unfelt... the balance tipped.
For the first time in forever, the Fallen were in control.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ring of Steel
ALICE HAD PUSHED her way through the crowd early on – or rather, it had parted before her. Perhaps they looked at her and saw the faintest of heat-hazes about her shoulders. Perhaps they saw the tarmac of the road bubble beneath her feet, or the tiny sparks that spat from her fingertips.
Or perhaps they saw the look on her face and decided that it was best to get out of her way.
One – a teenage boy barely old enough to shave,
scarf pulled up to his eyes – had tried to slow her down. He had held his ground and sniffed at her disdainfully, and pulled a knife out of his jacket pocket. He screamed as molten metal poured from between his fingers, and Alice moved on.
This wasn’t just a riot. It was angry and it was chaotic and it was cold – much colder than it should have been. The temperature had dropped by several degrees in the last hour, and that could mean only one thing.
This was them.
This was the Fallen. Rimmon she’d already seen – and that was most likely part of his plan, if he had one – but it wasn’t him she wanted. She was looking for Xaphan.
Memories flooded her mind, of a metal cage, a scarred face with a cruel smile, and a man strapped to a wheel, swallowed by hungry black fire. The leaves on a plane tree at the side of the road began to curl and shrivel.
“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself as a tall man in a black jacket and hood barged into her, almost knocking her sideways – but recoiling when he saw the scorch mark on his coat. He screamed and lunged at her, but it was so little effort to dodge him that she almost laughed as he tumbled into a heap beside her. She grabbed his shoulder, half-hauling him to his feet; he swung at her again and she ducked, popping back up to yank his hood down. “Go home!” she shouted, looking into his startled eyes. All she saw there was fear.
The clouds overhead had thickened, bolstered by smoke, turning the afternoon to dusk. Against the chaos of the crowd stood the immovable police line, batons and shields raised, helmet visors down; a wall of armour and flesh and bone. But all walls can be broken, and Alice watched as the first brick smashed into a shield. There was a cheer as the officer behind it staggered slightly, then drew himself up again. She could feel it all around her: the fear, the pain, the hate. It was carried on the air like a sea breeze.
Another brick smacked into a shield and, as one, the police line took a step forward.
One more brick, and a cheer from the crowd as the riot police beat their batons against their shields. The cheer became a chant, and the sound of baton-on-shield became a drum, and the clouds overhead were growing thicker and thicker...