Blood and Feathers (40 page)

The ice creaked beneath her, and the uneven surface sent her slipping sideways, first one way, then the other, but still she was running. The rough walls on either side of her bruised her as she hit them, scraped and cut her, and soon her arms and hips were red and raw. Blood dripped from her fingertips, where sparks danced. Still she was running, following the path that had been left for her.

The corridor sloped sharply downwards and she almost lost her footing altogether. Clinging to the walls, she edged forward, onward, downward. The drop grew steeper and soon the floor turned into steps, all coated in a layer of ice. And still she followed it, even as the shadows thickened, and the world shook around her.

Even for hell, it was cold here, and she could have sworn she could feel the wind on her face.

The corridor turned abruptly back on itself, and ended in a solid wall of ice. Or at least, it appeared to. Alice took a deep breath and slapped her hand against the wall.

“Charon!”

Nothing.

“Charon! I know you’re here.”

A faint whispering sound, somewhere inside the ice.

“Charon, come out, before I burn you out.”

“Look at you,” Charon was still buried in the ice, but Alice could see her clearly, blocking her path. Their eyes met, and Charon gave her a sly smile. Just like all the others, she had too many teeth. Far too many teeth. “Look what the angels have done to you, child. Turned you into their toy. Are you here for them, or for you? Do you even know?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

“Hell’s business is my business. I keep the Gate. I keep order here.”

“Seriously? I kind of hate to break it to you, but you’re
really
bad at it. And – I’d guess – out of a job.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Not going to. So we could stand here...” Alice stopped, knowing how absurd it sounded, and laughed. “You know what? You brought me down here. You
wanted
me down here, and don’t for a second think I don’t know who’s pulling the strings. Open the damned door.”

“As you wish.” Charon moved aside and the ice opened like a curtain, peeling back to leave an empty space. A blast of cold, stale air wrapped around Alice as she stared into the darkness, and she heard Charon whisper something behind her.

“And that was what, exactly?”

“Nothing that you would understand, half-breed.”

“That’s it. Screw you. I’m sick of this. I’m tired. I’m so incredibly fucking tired, and I’m cold.” With that, she rounded on Charon, plunging her hand into the ice behind her and doing her best to shut out the biting, blinding cold. And then Alice’s fingers closed around Charon’s wrist, and she smiled at her. “Like I said: out of a job.”

She watched Charon’s wide smile fade and turn to horror as she realised what was about to happen, as fire slid around her wrist and bubbled up her arm, as she screamed inside the ice-wall as it started to boil, and all the time, Alice held her there, watching her burn.

With Charon’s scream still ringing in her ears, she turned and started down the stairway into the darkness.

T
HE STAIRS FELT
like they went on forever, and with every step, it grew colder and darker, as though the shadows were filling hell from its roots. The breeze she had felt on her face was stronger here, moving her hair and forcing her to pull her coat tighter just to keep from freezing.

Each step took her further, deeper, into the cold, and she was afraid now, really afraid, but unable to stop.

And with no warning, the stairs ended at a narrow, arched doorway. Beyond, everything was cold and blue.

Alice stepped through the archway.

S
HE WAS STANDING
on the edge of a frozen lake, the doorway at her back. The shadows were gone here: everything was the same flat blue that made her eyes itch and burn. She thought she’d got used to it, but somehow, here it seemed flatter. Bluer. Colder.

Something moved under the ice and she dropped into a crouch, rubbing her hand across the surface to clear it of frost, to see beneath. A face loomed out of the deep, eyes open but unseeing. Scars ran down the cheeks; the skin was blistered and dead-white. Feathers floated in the water around it, and just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Below, the shadow-shapes of wings, of war-torn limbs and broken bodies, drifted, lost beneath the ice.

Alice wrapped her arms around her chest and stared into the light. There was something ahead of her, on the ice, although she couldn’t quite make it out at this distance. It was solid-looking. A block, resting on the surface of the ice, perhaps? And there was something in front of it, something darker. It almost looked like a figure. Just... sitting.

Not sitting.

Waiting.

Suddenly, her legs were moving, her feet running, pounding the ice. She did not hear the cracking of the ice, nor feel the cold wind as it blasted her. She did not see the fingers, the hands, the arms which reached up from beneath the ice – forever frozen there, hopeless and helpless. She did not see them, and her feet moved past them.

A
LICE WAS SIX
years old, and barefoot

Alice watched her mother die

Alice watched an angel Fall.

The wind is still rising, and Alice’s hair is blowing now, into her eyes and her mouth. She tucks it behind her ears, but it whips free again, flipping around her like a halo.

Alice is six, and twenty, and twenty-three. Everything she has ever been, everything she ever could be, is coming together now. Now, on the lowest level of hell, here on the frozen lake where her mother has always been waiting for her.

CHAPTER FORTY

We All Go to Hell

S
OMEONE HAD FASTENED
a tight band around Alice’s chest and was twisting it harder and harder, until it was impossible to breathe. The ice she stood on was thick, she knew that, she did – but it still felt spongy and far-off beneath her feet.

Her feet had run towards the thing on the lake of their own accord, and now they had stopped all by themselves. It was still a little way off, but Alice could see it more clearly: a great slab of ice. And inside it was a man.

Not a man: an angel. From here, she could see his wings, outstretched and shackled and buried in the ice.

Not an angel. Lucifer.

This was the heart of hell, and the ice was his prison.

She understood then: the Gate, the Fallen, the brands. Everything about hell was designed to protect him. He was vulnerable, both buried and exposed, and he had found a way to bend not just the Fallen to his will, but hell itself. It answered only to him. A sudden memory flashed through her mind – a memory of a face pushing up through the rock, of a face
made
of the rock beneath her as she stood on the wrong side of the Bone-Built Gate. The
right
side, if you thought about it.

He had been watching her all along.

T
HE WOMAN IN
front of Lucifer’s cell was sitting, hunched over, her head down. Long grey-streaked hair fell over her face and shoulders. The burned ruins of wings stuck out uncomfortably from her back, the bones at odd angles to one another; the feathers stripped to little more than spines. She showed no sign of noticing Alice when she stopped in front of her, but instead rocked to and fro, humming something under her breath.

Alice felt a stab of raw emotion as she recognised the lullaby.

“Mum?
Mum?
”

Still the angel rocked to and fro, back and forth, humming softly to herself.

“Mum? It’s me. It’s Alice. Can you hear me?”

Nothing, although Alice could have sworn that the humming stopped, just for a second, then continued.

“It’s Alice, Mum. Alice. Do you... do you remember?” She bit her lip. What if she didn’t remember her, didn’t know her? Would that be worse than the other things she had been so desperately fearing?

“Mum. Mum.” Alice knelt beside her and reached forward, hesitantly, laying her fingertips on her shoulders.

The hand that slapped her away moved too fast to see. Anger boiled up inside Alice and her palms itched and ached, but she swallowed the rising fire even as it choked her. She reached forward again, her voice steadier this time. “Mum...?” She shook her head. It was hopeless. “I guess you don’t remember me. Do you remember who you were, before you were here? Your name was Kate...”

“Haven’t been Kate for a long time.” The voice was an echo, a shade. But it was her mother’s. “I was, once. I dreamed a life. But it was only a dream, I think.”

“It wasn’t a dream. Look at me. You did have a life. Your name was Kate. You were married, his name was Richard. You had a daughter, Alice. Me.”

“Alice. No. I would remember. I would remember a daughter. I have no daughter.”

The words were like a blow to the face. Fire flared in Alice’s hands before she could stop it, and the Fallen angel’s head jerked up.

“Fire. Fire bad. Burning, burning.” She skittered backwards, hands scrabbling for purchase on the ice, trying to get as far away from Alice as she could.

“No!” Alice clamped her hands together. “No, no. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I just want you to remember.”

“Nothing to remember. Only cold. And dreams. So many dreams.” She lifted her head and her hair fell away from her face.

Alice found herself looking at her mother. Older than she knew it, and thinner, greyer, but it was her mother’s face. Her mother’s eyes.

“What do you remember?”

“Flying. I dream of flying. Of stars. Of the sun and the moon and the seas. Of light. Of warmth. Of hope.” Her eyes met Alice’s, and she blinked. “I dream of hope.”

“You used to have another name. Before. Do you remember that?”

“Names are all the same. All useless here. We are legion, we are nameless. We are Fallen.”

“Seket. Your name was Seket. Your
real
name, I suppose.”

Alice saw something shift behind her mother’s eyes: a spark that had not been there a moment ago.

“Seket.” She frowned. “Yes. That name. I... I know it. I can feel it. It feels like sunshine. Like summer rain.”

“I guess?” Alice found herself shuffling uncomfortably. This was... well,
strange
. Even allowing for the fact she was talking to her not-actually-dead-after-all mother in hell, this was strange. “You remember?”

“I do, I think. I was not always here. Not always cold. I had... I was...”

Seket raised her hands, turning them over as though seeing them for the first time. One of her wrists flashed white in the icy light, and Alice flinched. Of course her mother was branded. She had known she would be, and yet... to see it. It shocked her.

“Alice?”

“What?” Alice looked up. Her mother looked back at her. It was not just her mother’s
face
, but her mother, all of her, looking out from behind her eyes.

“Alice.”

“Mum?”

“I remember. I remember, Alice. Everything.”

“I thought...”

“How could I forget you, Alice?” Seket was standing now, slowly, unfolding herself, holding her hands out to her daughter.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“You did. I lost myself. That’s what happens here. That’s why it’s hell.”

“You left. You left us. You left me.”

“I know.”

“How could you do that?” Alice snatched her hands back. “How could you
choose
to do that? It’s not even that you let it happen. You
chose
it.”

“And you’re angry with me. I understand.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You’re forgetting, Alice. You’re forgetting that I am more than you think I am. I am more than just Kate, mother to Alice and wife to Richard. I am Seket, once of Raphael’s choir.”

“Don’t.”