“I won’t. I can do this. You’ll see.”
“Alright...” Castor took a step backwards, and raised his voice over the noise. “Everybody get back! We’re getting you out of here, but you need to trust us! Get right back. Cover your faces if you can...” He shot a glance at Alice, who tipped her head back and took a deep breath. She thought about the length of the corridor. The space between the cages. The wire mesh.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“On three. One... two...”
Alice stretched out her arms on either side of her; slipping her fingers through the mesh on either side.
“Three.”
Alice closed her eyes, and the mesh burned. It burned in a moving wave, scorching its way down the corridor, filling the space with blinding red light. There was a scream from somewhere ahead of them, but no other sound but the fire.
And as suddenly as it had flared, it was gone.
The fronts of the cages had simply melted away, leaving their occupants frightened and, in some cases, a little scorched around the edges, but otherwise unharmed. Where the doors had been were jagged-edged holes, and rapidly setting silver puddles on the floor.
Castor didn’t wait.
“Everybody out! Out! Out now!” he shouted, and the prisoners leapt into life, scrambling past them and past one another. Several of them slowed as they passed; some stared at Alice with something between disbelief and fear, and more than one gazed open-mouthed at Castor’s wings.
As the last of them fled through the darkness of the warehouse, Castor nodded.
“It’s time we stopped hiding,” he said to Alice, and set off down the corridor.
SITTING ON THE floor between Mallory and Toby, and still trying to work out what he should do next, Vin heard something rattle. Frowning, he looked around, and after a while he had managed to narrow it down to either Mallory’s chain, or one of the fantastically unpleasant bits of metal Rimmon had strewn across the floor.
As the rattling got louder, and louder... and louder, he realised it wasn’t either of them.
It was all of them.
“Mallory,” he hissed, grabbing Mallory’s shoulder and shaking it. “Mallory!” There was no response. “Mallory, you jackass. Wake the fuck up! The cavalry’s coming....”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Pay the Piper
RIMMON RAN, AS fast as he could. His coat flared out behind him and his shoes slipped on the concrete floor, sending him skidding into a wall, but he didn’t let it stop him.
He ran and ran and ran, with only one thought on his mind.
They’re here.
He barely managed to stop before he ran into the door ahead of him, and slapped his hand on it three times by way of a knock. He didn’t wait for an answer, but threw himself through it.
There, Lucifer stood peering at his own frozen face. The eyes that should have been Gwyn’s shone red, reflected in the ice in which his body was locked. He traced a finger down the block, trailing it along the chains and the padlocks, and then – smiling – he lifted his finger to his mouth and licked it.
“Why am I still waiting?” he asked, and although his tone was light and breezy, it was hard to miss the menace in it. “Michael will be here any moment, and I’m nowhere near ready to greet my brother...”
“A few minutes,” muttered Gabriel from behind the block, where he was huddled with Xaphan and Forfax.
“Gabe... Gabe?” Lucifer rubbed his hands together. “A moment, if you would?”
Gabriel edged around the block, careful not to so much as brush against its surface. He stood in front of Lucifer, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
“You’ve only just joined us – and we couldn’t be more delighted to have you here – so I’ll let that little... faux pas slide. But from now on?” He lashed out with his fingers, scoring deep lines across Gabriel’s cheeks. “No-one tells me to wait. I tell you what to do. Am I abundantly clear?”
“Yes. You are.” Chastened, Gabriel hung his head.
“Good, good. Now, why are you standing around talking to me? You’re wasting time...”
Gabriel said nothing, and edged back round the block to where Forfax was raising his cane. The jewel on the top of it glittered in the light as he spun it around his hand, throwing fragments of rainbows onto their faces. The light sparkled and danced, and suddenly it was gone, the gem clouding over and turning black. Forfax held it steady, and all three watched it intently as it cracked across the top, the crack deepening and widening and opening... and inside, there was a cube.
Xaphan pulled a pair of tweezers out of his pocket and jabbed them into the decaying bauble, fishing the cube out. It could have been metal, although colours swirled across the surface. Xaphan held it up and they all nodded approvingly at it before he snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Gabriel unwrapped the roll of cloth he had been holding, and took out a slim rod. It had a groove at one end, and a flat disc at the other, and it resembled nothing so much as a key.
A broken key.
With a look of triumph, Xaphan held up the two pieces, one in each hand – and pressed the side of the cube into the groove at the end of the rod. There was the faintest of clicks, and the key was whole.
The room shook, and Lucifer leaned around the ice block, raising an eyebrow at them.
“Any time. Any time...”
Gabriel felt the chill of Lucifer’s gaze on his back, and he watched Xaphan pull a cloth out of a plastic bag beside his feet. The cloth oozed, dripping something thick and dark onto the floor as he wiped it over the palm of his hand.
“I think it’s time to show the angels that the world has changed... don’t you?” He grinned, showing too many teeth, and slapped the flat of his hand onto the surface of the ice.
Lucifer’s head snapped back, red eyes staring at the ceiling as the hand-print wept blood. All eyes except Lucifer’s were on it, watching... watching as the scarlet thickened, darkened and turned to rust – and was sucked into the ice. The mark grew fainter and fainter, fading fast... but behind it, thin red lines began to creep through the solid blue of the prison.
“This is it,” said Forfax, discarding his cane. It had served its purpose.
Xaphan wiped his hand clean. “This is it.”
THE WHOLE BUILDING was shaking by the time Alice and Castor cleared the corridor; it felt not unlike standing underneath a low-flying helicopter. Or six.
“Why aren’t they coming?”
“They already have.” Castor’s mouth set in a grim line. “They’re here.”
“So where are they?”
“Following orders.”
They pushed through a pair of metal swing doors and found themselves in another long room lit by emergency lighting. There were low counters running down it, splitting it into three... and there was that smell again. Sweeter, though, and mixed with something else. Bleach.
“Castor... where are we?”
“Kitchen.”
“Kitchen?”
“Kitchen.”
“Promise me you’re not going to turn on the lights?”
“Absolutely.”
They fumbled their way through in the near-dark, relying on dim green bulbs and flickering flames, and Alice was more grateful than she imagined possible when they reached the far end.
“I hate this,” she said to Castor. He stopped, and when she turned to him, all she could see was the shadow of his face.
“I know,” he said. “But it’s what we do.”
“You ever thought about changing career?”
“Sure. I became a copper, didn’t I?” There was something close to a laugh in his voice. “World of difference.”