Blood and Feathers (31 page)

“Alright,” she groaned, sitting down heavily, “so you have any idea where we are? At all?”

“Sure. I told you: where the crazy people come.” He sat down beside her and stretched his legs out, shoving a tree root to one side with his boot. It bounced back and he scuffed at it, swearing.

“That’s not helpful.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true, though, does it? See these trees?” He leaned back and grabbed hold of a small branch, oblivious to the thorns that pricked his skin. With a sudden burst of effort, he tugged on it and it snapped clean off the tree, and a high-pitched scream rang out, making Alice sit bolt upright, her eyes wide. As the scream faded, a soft moaning rose up around them as though in answer. It, too, died down and left them in silence. Abbadona held up the branch. “The trees don’t like it when you do that.”

“What
are
they?”

“Used to be people.” He dropped the wood and rubbed his palms together, wiping the blood from his hands. Alice stared at the branch he had discarded and reached for it, but he slapped her hand away. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. They might not like having the odd branch pulled off, but just imagine how they’d feel about a forest fire.”

Alice promptly put her hands in her pockets. He had a point. “So if they used to be people, what did they do to end up here?”

“No idea.” He twisted a piece of root that had caught on his jacket, and there was another shriek from the tree. “Like I say, I don’t come here, so don’t expect me to know all the rules, but I’m telling you, it can’t have been good.” The tree shrieked again, and he swore at it. “Well, let go of my fucking coat then, would you?” he said, pulling at the root, which clung on all the more stubbornly.

Alice edged away. “Don’t you think you should stop doing that? If it... hurts it?”

“Hello? Fallen. Not supposed to be
nice
.”

“Clearly.”

S
HE WATCHED AS
man took on tree, and lost. Repeatedly. The swearing got louder. The shrieking got louder still, and the moaning with it. Eventually, Alice couldn’t take it any more and leapt forward, forcibly hauling Abbadona to his feet and away.

And let go immediately.

She hadn’t just felt it; she had
seen
it.

Abbadona, beaten and bloody, and tied to a wheel. It spun, slowly. So slowly. And it burned with a black fire that chewed at his flesh without ever consuming him. It just kept on burning.

Her ears rang and her breath caught in her throat. There were stars floating across her vision, pinwheeling past her.

She was seeing what had happened to him when he’d come back to hell.

“This is because of me. I did this.”

“No.” His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Purson did that. The wheel’s one of Xaphan’s greatest hits.”

“It hurt...”

“Oh, yeah. It hurt. A lot. And for a long time. Every once in a while, Lucifer would pop into my head, just to make sure I wasn’t lying about just how
much
pain I was in. He’s nice like that.” He helped her to her feet, steadying her as she staggered slightly. “I should thank you, really. I guess that was the point I decided I’d had enough.” He held up his burned wrist, rubbing at it thoughtfully. “I’ve never minded it down here as much as some of the others. We have a purpose, you know? The Plains... the Dark House... it makes sense after a while. Even
you
get that,” he said. “But this? What Lucifer’s done, there’s always someone else in your head, and after a while, you can’t even be sure that what you’re thinking is actually
you
, and that really is hell, Alice.”

“And that’s why you’ve come this far? Because you feel like you owe me?”

“Piss off. No. I’ve come this far with you because I’m done down here, and you’re really my best option. My only option. So I’m helping you, and if we get caught, then god help us both.”

Alice was about to answer, but heard a rustling, shuffling sound behind her and turned. At first, she saw nothing, just the cold, empty forest, but then a pair of black-tipped ears appeared from behind a fallen tree, then two round yellow eyes and a long, pointed muzzle.

“Look at that,” she said, watching as it crept out further, eyeing the two of them. Abbadona was busy examining a hole in his jacket – the result of his epic battle with the tree – and didn’t look up. “What?”

“It’s a fox. I think he’s watching us.”

“A what?” he dropped the hem of his jacket and peered over her shoulder.

“A fox. Look! There.”

“Alice.” Abbadona’s voice was quiet, calm, but urgent. “There aren’t any foxes in hell.”

“But...”

“Run!” he grabbed her hand, ignoring the fire that flashed up between them, and he dragged her with him – and they were running through the forest, ducking the low-hanging branches, jumping the roots that stuck out of the ground like iron spikes. The thorns tore at Alice’s hair, at her skin and her coat as they raced past; her heart pounded and her muscles burned. The air stung her face and her eyes streamed, but it was not the cold that chilled her even as she ran: it was the single question which hung in her mind. Because if that had not been a fox....

Behind them, the fox hopped down from the fallen limb of the tree and blinked, watching as they disappeared into the forest. It scratched behind one ear and yawned lazily... but as it yawned, its mouth opened wider and wider, stretching further and further open, until its whole head seemed to disappear behind its jaws – and still it yawned, becoming a thing of teeth and throat and little else. And suddenly, there was a man standing in its place. A man with too many teeth and a badly-scarred face, smoothing down his hair and smiling as he spread his burned wings.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Oriflamme

“Y
OU BRING YOUR
whole choir with you, or what?” Mallory eyed the Earthbounds who were following Vin and lining themselves up in a semi-circle around the Gate.

Vin shrugged. “Everyone I could find.”

“Will it be enough?”

“One way to find out.” He shook his wings free with a flourish, opening them wide. “Hold these,” he said, passing Mallory his sunglasses. “And look after them, would you? Those are my babies. You break them, I break you.” On that note, he turned and stalked away.

Mallory looked down at the glasses and shook his head. “Muppet.”

“I heard that!” said Vin’s retreating back.

T
HERE WERE FEWER
Earthbounds from Barakiel’s choir than he had hoped. This meant one of two things: either his peers had decided to sit this one out, or Barakiel’s boys and girls tended to be much better-behaved than the other Archangels’ and there were simply fewer of them in exile. Thinking back to the time before he was banished, Vin strongly suspected the latter. Still, fifty was a good enough number, particularly when one of them looked like Saritiel. She had taken a position directly in front of the Gate, right behind where he would need to stand – and sure, maybe he could argue it was for purely practical reasons, her gift being one of the strongest, the luckiest, in the whole choir. But equally, he could convince himself quite happily that, really, it was because she wanted to be close to him.
Needed
to be. Yes. That sounded a whole lot better.

He stopped in front of the Gate, staring at it like he hoped that would be enough to bring it down. It wouldn’t, but it was always worth a go. The truth was that he had no idea whether this would work. Nor what it could do to him if it didn’t.

“Alright, then. Let’s do this.”

He rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. As one, the other angels opened their wings; heads tipped back, eyes closed. Vin blew out the breath he had been holding and turned his hands over, palms up, tipping them towards the Gate. Grey fog tumbled from his hands, spilling through his fingers and sliding over the rock towards the bones. It crept up the vertical surface of the Gate, clinging like dust to everything it touched: thin tendrils of mist weaving around the curves of skulls and hips wedged side-by-side. Inch by inch, the bleached white of old bone darkened to grey, mottled with age and moss.

Sweat beaded on Vin’s forehead as the stone rose up the Gate, far beyond his head and out of sight – rushing now towards the vanished roof – and for the first time, his hands shook. Really shook, uncontrollably. His body ached. His head throbbed and the cold, which he had been doing his best to ignore, drilled into his heart. There was something else, too: a dull ache in his bones; a heavy slowness that was binding to him somewhere deep inside, but he pushed it away. He knew what it was, and that was enough. The Gate must fall.

He could feel the stone now, feel the weight of it pulling on his hands and drawing him towards it. He pulled back to hold his ground. It was so nearly done, so close. Just. A. Little. More.

Somewhere high above, stone met bone met rock and, with a groan, it was over. Vin was vaguely aware of the voices behind him: the angels of his choir opening their eyes to see what it was that he had done.

The Bone-Built Gate was no longer bone. No less solid, it could have been cut from a mountain and dropped into hell. It had worked. A cheer went up from the Earthbounds huddled behind the ring of Barakiel’s choir just as Vin’s strength gave out. His legs folded in on themselves and, suddenly, there were hands on his shoulders.

“Vhnori?”

M
ALLORY WATCHED AS
the Gate changed, slowly at first, but then with alarming speed. He saw Vin sag as his hands dropped, saw Saritiel rush to his side. The cheer echoed around the entrance to hell: a thousand angels spoiling for a fight, and they were just the beginning. Mallory knew what would happen as soon as the Gate was down. The Fallen had broken the rules, and the full wrath of the angels was about to land on them. He almost felt sorry for them.
Almost
, because Alice was still in there.

Without realising it, he had been shouldering his way through the crowd towards the Gate, checking his gun and reloading it as he went. He stopped automatically beside Vin as Saritiel helped him to his feet. “Not bad.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Want these back?” Mallory held out the sunglasses, and Vin took them, a little shakily.

“What happens now?” he asked as he dropped them into his pocket, first giving them a quick once-over. He caught Mallory staring at him and shrugged defensively. “They weren’t cheap, alright?”

“Hmmph. Now,” said Mallory, turning his gun over in his hands, “we see what’s through door number one.”

He let out a long, loud whistle and the angels who had crowded around the Gate, touching it as though they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing, suddenly parted like a sea, clearing a path between Mallory and the Gate. They stood stock-still, just watching. Waiting.

Mallory was running. His wings snapped open, and he was in the air, racing towards the Gate. Rolling in mid-air, he brought up the gun and pointed it at the centre of the Gate, unloading every round he had and firing until the chamber was empty. At first, nothing happened, and his heart sank. Then he heard it: a quiet cracking sound, almost too low to notice.

“Clear the Gate!” he shouted, and suddenly the air was full of angels massing behind him, their wings beating in time. Spinning towards the Gate, Mallory offered up the closest thing he had to a prayer that he was right, that the stone would give, just as his boot crashed through it.

The cracks spiderwebbed out through the Gate; the broken edges of the stone grinding against one another as they shifted. Fragments shook loose and rained down, shattering into dust as the remaining angels took to the air – even Vin, exhausted but in no hurry to be crushed by falling rock. The Gate was crumbling, and the angels drew back as the pieces grew larger and fell faster, from higher and higher.

A huge dust-cloud rose from beneath the pieces as they fell, mushrooming up and around them and swirling through the currents made by the beating wings of the angels. The air grew thick with it: a dusty, musty, choking fog that shut out everything beyond it and cloaked them in silence. The only sound was of feathers.