Blood and Feathers (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Knock, Knock

V
IN STARED UP
at the Bone-Built Gate and let out a low whistle. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they didn’t want to see us. I’m actually kind of hurt.” His head tipped back as he tried to follow it all the way to the top, but he quickly gave up. “They might as well have just hung a big sign out the front that says ‘Fuck off.’”

“I think they did,” said Mallory, running his hand across one of the bones. He sat down in front of the gate and stared at it, glumly, one hand reaching under his jacket for his flask.

Vin paced up and down behind him. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be here: those rules you mentioned...?”

“Screw the rules.” The cold had even crept into Mallory’s drink, making him shiver as it went down. He didn’t enjoy the feeling. And no, they weren’t supposed to be there, but it didn’t exactly seem as though the Descendeds were playing by the rules any more, either.

“Yo
U’RE NEEDED.
”

“Am I, now?” Mallory had not been surprised by Gwyn’s voice coming from the other side of his room, nor by the lack of warning before his appearance... or even a simple greeting. What did surprise him when he looked up from his book was that Gwyn was in armour, his wings bristling with sparks. “What’s this? Suit at the cleaners?”

“I said you’re needed.”

“And I heard you. What you didn’t tell me is where, or why.” He folded his arms.

“Are you challenging me?”

“No, I’m just waiting for you to tell me what you want. You could start by explaining... that.” He pointed at the armour. “Off to war, are we?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Mallory paled. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“She’s on her way, Mallory. It won’t be long before someone notices her. They’ll all be watching.”

“And you know how thrilled I am about that.”

“You say you have faith in her? Good. Then you don’t need to worry about her. You’re confident Alice can complete her task, and if you are, then so am I. But that alone is not enough. This was always going to be a two-pronged attack. With Alice on the inside, we have the perfect opportunity...”

“We can’t destroy hell, Gwyn. It’s impossible. Lucifer’s too deeply embedded.”

“Maybe not. But we can certainly inflict enough damage to keep them occupied licking their wounds for a while.”

“This was supposed to be about the balance; about restoring things to the way they should be, not trying to tip it in our favour. It can’t be done.”

“Yes, it can. Don’t you see?
Now
, it can. Think, Mallory. Think what we could do!”

“No.”

“No?”

“I won’t have any part in this. It’s wrong. You
know
it is.” Mallory picked up his book again, but Gwyn clicked his fingers and it crumbled to dust in his hands. Mallory sighed. “Great. Now I’m never going to know if they get together at the end.” He brushed his palms together and stood up, looking Gwyn up and down. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Gwyn, but I’m asking you not to do this. Please.”

“The orders come from Gabriel.”

“Of course they do. There’s no-one else stupid enough to come up with a full-on assault on hell. Except you, maybe. You don’t think they’ll be expecting us?”

“Knowing there’s a half-born running around inside hell should focus their attention elsewhere relatively quickly. And believe me, Mallory, they
will
know. However careful she is, Lucifer will sniff her out. The rest is up to her.” He narrowed his eyes at the Earthbound. “So I hope you trained her well.” He paused, examining his fingernails. Against his armour, the gesture looked absurd. “If you have a problem, of course, you can always take it up with Gabriel...”

“That won’t be necessary.” Mallory picked up his gun, tucking it into his belt. Even across the room, he could feel Gwyn’s satisfaction. “Tell me, Gwyn: you want to take the war to hell,
into
hell? What happens to the ones who die down there? Because you know the Fallen won’t be kind. They don’t even have to work at it to kill us, if we go in there. It doesn’t matter if we’re Earthbound, Descended or even Archangel. And then there’s the rest of it: get stuck down there and death would be a blessing, so what happens to the ones who get left behind?”

“They get left behind. But if we take the Gate, we even the odds. They will have no shelter.”

“Neither will we.”

“You’re not listening. In hell, we have no shelter. If they kill us, we die. But destroy the Gate...”

“The same thing happens to them. No reboots, no do-overs.”

“Quite.”

“But they’ll be desperate. And there’s a lot of them – the damage they could do...”

“Collateral damage. Acceptable losses, given the stakes. And if you’re weak enough to let the Fallen take you, I’d argue that you deserve everything you get.”

“That seems a little... cruel.”

“Remind me, Mallory: isn’t it you that’s always talking about duty; about your job as a soldier? Yes? So here’s a suggestion: go do it, before I take your wings for good.”

“S
O, ERR, HOW
are we going to do this, then?” Vin had wrapped his wings around himself as best he could. Anything to keep out the cold. The tips of the feathers were slowly turning brittle with frost.

Mallory sat and stared at the Gate, cradling his gun in his lap. “I have no idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Other People

“O
H, LOOK.
M
ORE
steps. Goody!”

“I’m sorry. If you’d called ahead, we’d have had lifts installed.”

“Wait. You hear that sound? That’s my sides, splitting.”

Alice rolled her eyes. She was bored with Abbadona’s barbed comments, she was tired and she was cold. She had no idea where she was going, what she was going to do when she got there, or even what kind of place ‘there’ might be. It was all starting to feel a little...

“Hopeless?” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at her. “That’s the angel juju wearing off. You see, you spend long enough with them and the world gets all shiny. Anything’s possible when you see it through an angel’s eyes, and you’re an empath, aren’t you? So you get a double-dose. And now you’re down
here
...”

“Nothing seems possible. I get it, thanks. I’m just sick of all these sodding
steps
.” She peered over the edge of the staircase. “How much further?”

“Not far now.”

“I can’t see anything down there,”

“I know. I told you this level’s fun.”

“What?”

“You’ll see. Sort of.”

He chuckled, and turned his back on her again.

H
E WAS RIGHT,
though: she had felt so confident, so sure of herself. They had told her she could do this, and she’d believed them. Mallory had made her believe them. But the further she went, the colder she got, and the more uncertain she became. What if they had been wrong? It was possible, wasn’t it? What if, for all their talk, she was just Alice, and there was nothing special about her at all? What if she failed?

The stairway ended abruptly, and she found herself standing on another sheet of rock. Abbadona was staring ahead, looking for something – although what, Alice couldn’t make out. She couldn’t make
anything
out, as it happened. Ahead of them, there was nothing but blackness. Just complete, total and utter dark.

“I told you this would be fun,” he said.

“What am I looking at, exactly?”

“You ever heard the phrase ‘dark night of the soul’?”

“Vaguely.”

“Come off it, Alice. Of course you have. I remember your living room. All those books. You grew up with theology coming out of your ears.”

“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“This is it.”

“It’s dark.”

“Precisely. And you have to go through it.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I don’t make the rules.” He shrugged. “I’ll be a few steps ahead of you. There’s a path that cuts through to the next level, but you’ll have to stay close. If you get lost, you’re staying lost. And before you even think about lighting up,” he pointed to her hands, “don’t. Just don’t.”

“I think I can handle a little bit of dark. I’m not four, you know.”

“Let’s see how you feel when you get to the other side.
If
you make it to the other side.”

He sounded entirely too smug, and Alice found herself weighing the possibility of setting fire to him against that of punching him in the face. Both felt like they would be equally satisfying, but instead she gritted her teeth and curled her fingers tightly against her palms.

The first few steps were fine; a little unsteady, perhaps, but fine. As soon as her foot touched the floor for the next, however, it was as though a curtain fell around her, boxing her into a dark so thick she could almost touch it. Nor was it just an
absence
of light; this was a visible darkness, with a presence all its own. Quite without realising it, she stopped walking.

Hearing a whispering sound behind her, she spun round. There was nothing there, just more of the same darkness. Again, there was a noise at her back and she turned again... and again... and again – until, with a horrible crawling sensation, she realised she had no idea which way she was facing. She opened her mouth to call for Abbadona, but no sound came out. She could
feel
the dark rushing into her mouth and throat, clogging it with velvet. She retched, and forced her mouth shut.

The whispers in the dark continued. Ghasts, she thought. It must be Ghasts; although, given closer consideration, that wasn’t such a comforting idea. The noises swirled about her, a current of sounds, and the more she listened to them, the more she thought she could make the voices out, pick out the words. “Disappointed,” said one. “Disappointed, disappointed, disappointed...”

“...Not responding to the treatment as well as we’d hoped...”

“...Let me down. What would your mother say?”

She would have known that last voice anywhere. It was her father’s.

Suddenly, she was nineteen – no, twenty – again. He’d had the grace to wait until just after midnight; sitting in the back room, her head in her hands. Her clothes were crumpled and smelled dirty, and there was grime under her fingernails. He paced up and down in front of her, saying things she barely heard and barely cared about. All she was interested in was making her headache go away. Possibly after she’d found a way to stop the churning in her stomach, or the shaking in her hands. Or both.

“...So much potential, Alice. If only you’d
focus
...”

“...Not what I was hoping for...”

“...Just look at yourself....”

“...Trying our best to help, but you need to let us...”

“...Given you everything, and all you’ve done is thrown it back in my face...”

“...Ungrateful... Ashamed...”

“...Recommend another course, a different medication...”

T
HE VOICES WERE
coming thick and fast. No longer whispers, they filled Alice’s ears, filled her head. There was nothing now except for the storm that raged around her in the thick, silky darkness.

“...Don’t even recognise you any more...”

She braced herself for what she knew was coming. It wouldn’t be long now.

“...Give anything,
anything
to trade you for her... Don’t understand why they took her away and left me with
you
...”

Alice sank to the floor, burning like a comet, and she was lost.

A
ND THEN A
hand reached through the fire and the darkness and took hold of her wrist, pulling her to her feet. The voices were gone and the only thing left was a wispy strand of black mist that caught at Alice’s ankles. Abbadona shook his hand up and down, looking wounded; already the fresh burns on his hand were turning into great shining welts. “Fun, huh?”