Blood and Feathers (29 page)

“There was something I had to do.”

“Yes, yes. I know. But right now, I need you to stand up. You can do that, right?”

“But I’m comfortable.”

“I know. That’s the problem. If you don’t get up now, you won’t. Ever. That’s it. Game over. Done. You’re
this
close.” He held his finger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart. “Hell’s got her hooks in you, and unless you get up and you get moving, you’ll never be free. So get up. Now.”

“I... I... don’t....” Her eyelids were growing heavy.

“Oh, for...” he tailed off with a growl. “I swore I was over doing this.” Leaning close to her, he slung her arms around his neck and picked her up, holding her tightly against his chest, his wings held out as a counterbalance. “Just so we’re clear, you’d better make sure those angels of yours hold up their end of the bargain, or I’m personally going to see to it that you wish I’d left you here to rot.”

A
LICE OPENED HER
eyes.

She was in a boat.

This was mildly unexpected.

Alice closed her eyes again.

“A
RE 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?

T
HE 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

M
ALLORY 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...”

T
HEY 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, laughing, 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.

T
HERE 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.