The world blurred. She felt herself lunge forward, but she suddenly had no control over her body. Someone else was at the wheel, foot to the floor, making her spin and spin as she hurled herself at Florence. There was a sound like an animal screaming: something roaring in pain, and it was only as she felt her arm connect with flesh and saw Castor stumble back that she realised it was her. It was all her.
The moment she had laid eyes on Florence, her mind emptied. Where there had been thoughts, feelings, something rational before, now there was only fury. No fire, no flames. Just hate. The implacable need to tear the woman in front of her to pieces.
She was wrenched back, away from her prey, and thrown to the ground. Mallory leaned over her, a hand on her chest, pinning her down. “Get a grip, Alice.”
Alice couldn’t do anything more than splutter at him. He was on their side? She stared up at him and he stared straight back. “Trust me.”
She nodded mutely, which he took as a sign that he could let her up. As she brushed herself down, she caught sight of Vin, still in the doorway. He was watching Xaphan and Florence with a look of barely-disguised contempt, his fists curled into tight balls and clamped down by his sides.
Florence had the grace to look uncomfortable. How else could she look, sitting in the back room of a church and surrounded by people who wanted very little more than to see her dead? Xaphan was one of the Fallen – more than that, he was one of their generals, one of the Twelve – but Florence was a traitor to the angels. She had betrayed them alclass="underline" her mentor, her friends. They had good reason to want her dead.
“Tell them what you told me,” Mallory barked. “And quickly. I can’t promise you they’ll both control their tempers for long.”
“I don’t know what to...”
“Then choose. You want to burn to death, or you want to join the statues out there?” Mallory nodded first to Alice, then to Vin – neither of whom had taken their eyes off Florence. Xaphan muttered something under his breath, nursing the bloody wound on his thigh... and quick as a flash, Mallory was across the room again and in front of him, the barrel of his gun pressing into the ragged hole in his leg. Xaphan howled, but Mallory only pressed harder, twisting as the barrel dug deeper. “Did I ask for your opinion?” he snarled, then looked back up at Florence. “Spit it out, girl.”
“We need your help. I do. He does...” She shook her head. “Jester. Jester does.”
Hearing Jester’s name, Vin twitched. “What did you do to him?”
“Me? No – I didn’t!” Florence pressed herself back into the sofa as Vin took a step forward. Alice had never seen him look so angry.
“Where is he?”
“He... they... Michael. Michael took him.”
“What?”
“Michael took him.” Florence’s face had gone from pale green to bone-white. “I need your help to get him back.”
“FROM MICHAEL? WHAT the fuck would Michael want with him? He’s not done anything –” Vin suddenly tailed off, whipping round and kicking out at the wall. “Idiot. I warned him.”
“You warned him? About what?” Mallory had pulled his gun out of Xaphan’s leg, and was wiping the blood off the barrel with what looked like Alice’s favourite tea-towel. On any other day, she might have been annoyed.
Vin’s mouth set in a line. “I heard that Michael was after Jester. I didn’t believe it, but I told him to keep his head down. There’s been nothing from him in a few days, so I thought he’d actually listened for once...”
Alice had just about got enough of a grip on herself to be able to concentrate on something other than not setting fire to the building. It was challenging – a little like trying to pat her head and hop on the spot at the same time – but she was reasonably confident she could do it. Reasonably. She wondered whether she’d replaced the fire extinguisher under the sink: she’d gone through the last three so quickly that she couldn’t quite remember.
“Why did Michael want Jester?” she asked.
Vin rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Purson.”
The name made Alice’s fingers itch. Fire threatened to fight its way back out from inside her, but she swallowed it back down. Purson. She remembered him all too welclass="underline" Lucifer’s favourite torturer and executioner, he had vanished during the battle for hell. The angels had, for the most part, assumed he was dead, but judging by Vin’s face, she wondered whether that was the truth. He looked... shifty. There was no other way of putting it.
“Vhnori,” she said, using his full name and making him roll his eyes, “why did Michael want Jester?”
“We took Purson, alright?”
“You what?”
“We took him. We caught him, and we took him.”
“To Hong Kong.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I don’t... oh, tell me you didn’t? Please tell me you didn’t.”
Vin had fixed his gaze firmly on a spot on the far wall. “You weren’t there, Alice.”
“I wasn’t there? Wasn’t there when, exactly? I wasn’t there when he executed someone in front of me? Or I wasn’t there when he dropped you off the top of a building? Don’t you dare.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He hung his head.
“What doesn’t matter? That you’ve tortured one of the Fallen?”
“Hey, I didn’t see you judging anyone when Castor stuck a spike through Xaphan’s leg. Or when Mallory just jammed his gun into an open wound.”
“That’s different.”
“Yeah? Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
“You know what he did.”
“And like you said, you know what Purson did to me.”
“I never thought you were the type to do it back.” She shook her head. “So now I have to worry about Mallory and you doing it?”
“Oh, you can leave me out of this,” Mallory said from the corner of the room. He wasn’t watching them: he was watching Xaphan. None of this seemed to come as a surprise, and if Alice didn’t know better, she would have assumed that Mallory already knew...
Her mouth dropped open.” You knew about this?”
“About this?” He waved his gun at Xaphan and Florence. “Or about that?” He gestured at Vin. “Because that I knew about. You don’t seriously think I wouldn’t, do you?”
“Jesus. Next you’ll be telling me you helped him...” Mallory sniffed and refused to look her in the eye. “Oh, come on.”
“Can you perhaps concentrate on the matter in hand, Alice? You’re perfectly free to tell me how disappointed in me you are, but now isn’t the best time.”
“I can’t even...” Alice held up her hands and shot Vin a dirty look. “What happened to you?” she hissed at him, but he shook his head.
“Not now.”
Someone was slow-clapping. Xaphan had leaned back into the threadbare cushions and was watching them with an amused look on his face.
“Well, well. Dissent in the ranks, Mallory?”
“Shut up.”
“No, really. I mean, you honestly think you can win? You can’t even control your own underlings.”
“Shut up, Xaphan.”
“If it wasn’t so funny, it would be tragic. You know that, don’t you?”
“I... said... shut... up.” Mallory strode back to the sofa with his gun, pointing it at Xaphan’s nose. Xaphan snorted, and leaned forward so that his forehead was resting against the end of the barrel.