ALICE HAD THE strangest sense of deja vu. The warehouse, she knew, would have a green neon sign on the front: the entrance to a sleazy-looking club. Around the corner was an alley full of rubbish, and just along from that was another warehouse. Or what was left of one.
She’d been here before.
She’d been here the night she had caught up with Murmur.
“Michael?”
“Alice.”
“You said this is where they’re hiding. Since when?”
“Since we burned them out of hell.”
“And you knew that?”
“Of course I did. But I had no reason...”
“You knew they were here, and you did nothing?”
“Would you have had me do, Alice?”
“Stop them! Kill them! Anything!”
“And then what?”
“Excuse me?”
“Then what? I could have taken Forfax at any time. Xaphan too, and any number of the others. But Lucifer would still be dust in the wind, and it’s him I want. Him, and now Gabriel.”
“But you could have stopped this. If you’d taken them... Zadkiel... Medea... those kids. You could have saved them!”
“And what good would it have done me? Would it have brought me any closer to Lucifer? No.”
“But his generals. The Twelve...”
“Would have been replaced. They always are.” He adjusted the edge of his breastplate. “For all this time, I have fought a war of attrition. I have tried to wear them down faster than they wear us down. I have followed the rules: rules which, by the way, Lucifer is more than content to break. I have been patient. No more.”
“I just think you don’t like the idea of losing.”
Alice was prepared for Michael to be angry, but the violence of his reaction still took her by surprise. One second she was standing on dark, damp, vomit-spattered tarmac, the next she was... somewhere else.
It was a box, mirrored on all sides. The floor, the roof, each wall... all reflected her own frightened face. Not quite a cube, it was tall enough for her to stand, and wide and long enough for her to reach out her arms. She couldn’t see how it was lit, but it was certainly light enough for her to make out her surroundings. With mounting panic, she realised that was part of the point.
“What are you doing, Michael?” she asked, her voice bouncing back to her with tinny resonance. The only other sound was her breathing, and it crossed her mind that she had no idea how much air she had...
“Michael?” She called his name, louder. There was no answer.
Not unless she counted the tiny red spark which appeared in front of her nose. It hung in the air, dancing... and then slowly, slowly, it fell. It landed at her feet.
The floor caught fire.
Flames shot up from the glass, burning nothing and everything all at once. And it hurt.
It hurt.
Alice was so shocked that she almost didn’t feel the pain. Almost. But as the flames swallowed her feet, wrapped around her shins, stretching – reaching – for her, she started to scream.
It hurt.
It shouldn’t hurt. It couldn’t.
It’s not real, she told herself. It’s not real. It’s in my mind. Michael’s in my head.
But it felt real – and that was the last clear thought she had. Everything else was screaming and heat and blinding, blistering pain.
It hurt.
She tried to bang on the glass, but it was too hot to touch and she was appalled to see that where her fingertips brushed it, there were smeared red-black marks.
She could smell burning hair.
And it hurt...
...And with a jolt she was back on the concrete. Michael was in front of her, watching her with narrowed eyes, while behind her a troop of angels waited for his command.
She held her hands up in front of her, turning them over to check first the backs and then her palms. She was fine. There wasn’t even a speck of ash on her. She’d been right: it wasn’t real. It was all in her mind.
“Do not provoke me, Alice,” he said again.
He didn’t wait for her to answer: perhaps he knew that she was far too shaken to speak. Perhaps he didn’t care if she did or not. All he did was turn on his heel and walk away... towards the warehouse.
“Wasn’t real. Wasn’t real. It wasn’t real...” she told herself – without pausing to wonder why, if it wasn’t real, her mouth felt so dry, and why she could taste burning hair at the back of her throat...
There was movement in the shadows beside the warehouse, and Alice watched a figure detach itself from the dark and approach Michael. Castor, and beside him, carrying a long staff, was Pollux. They were speaking to the Archangel, and Alice could see Michael nodding as he listened, following Castor’s gestures as he pointed to various sections of the building. They were almost ready.
Mallory and Vin were in there. That was all that mattered to her: she didn’t care about the rest of it – not really. She didn’t care about the Fallen. She didn’t care about Gabriel. She didn’t care about Lucifer. She didn’t care about Rimmon or Xaphan. She didn’t even care about finally getting her hands on Florence, she realised. She didn’t care about their battles; their war. She didn’t care about the world and whether it kept on turning.
She cared about them.
Castor and Pollux broke away from Michael, moving to the side of the building, and Michael squared up to the warehouse. His wings unfurled, feathers trembling as they opened wide and orange sparks jumped across the surface. She heard wings behind her, and she turned to see every angel there, lined up on the empty tarmac, with their wings open. Waiting. Still waiting.
Michael looked like a statue. His sword raised, his head tipped back. His wings wide open...
Alice’s heart raced in her chest.
There was a sudden shout – a battle cry – and every angel’s wings burst into life: the fire was so bright that Alice threw an arm up in front of her face to shield her eyes. All she saw was fire. Metal glittered deep within it, but the fire...
Another shout, and Michael jabbed at the dark sky with his sword. There was a cheer from the angels – loud enough to make Alice’s ears ring – and they began to move.
It was no stampede, no rush. No disorganised charge. They marched. One foot, then the other. Even, steady. Holding the lines, burning like suns. And Michael led them: lost at the heart of the flames, only his sword visible behind his blazing wings, he walked calmly towards Lucifer’s hiding place.
Alice watched as they passed; column after column, row after row. Their eyes forward, their swords ready. They didn’t question, didn’t hesitate. They would follow Michael wherever he led... How many of them, she wondered, had had the shiny-box treatment?
Michael had given her no orders. Not really. He knew what she would do.
She would find them, whatever it took. Whatever it cost.
She was the only one who would try.
The last of the lines moved past her, and she squinted towards the warehouse, sitting squat and dark on the far side of the fire. The Fallen knew they were coming. It’s what Michael wanted. There was no attempt to hide – not from Lucifer, and not from the rest of the world. Anyone could have seen them... but perhaps that was the point. There had been something about staying hidden, hadn’t there? Perhaps the time had come for them to move out of the shadows. Perhaps it was their only chance.
“Far too philosophical, Alice,” she said to herself, and closing her eyes she reached out to the warehouse. If that was where the Fallen had been hiding all this time, there would be more than enough pain there. More than enough fuel for the fire.
It washed over her, around her; crowding her and crushing her and shutting out the world. Closing her off to everything but someone else’s pain. It ate through her, pushing its way into her fingers, her lungs, her bones... it wove and threaded itself through her, and deep in her eyes, when she opened them, were spinning circles of fire.