Rebellion

there won’t be a world to fight for. And then what good is your precious little half- born?”

He fell silent, and watched Michael pacing up and down. He’d said enough. Michael tolerated him speaking his mind, but he had limits. And being told he was wrong didn’t put him in the best of moods.

“I’ve let her run long enough. It’s time. The very fact she’s taken on the Fallen – the Twelve, no less – by herself...”

“She wasn’t by herself, though, was she? ‘The Earthbounds came.’” Zak slid off the sill and leaned back against the wall as Michael finally gave up on pacing and sat on the steps of the dais. “That’s what’s really getting under your skin: that she won’t do what she’s told and now the other angels are turning to her instead of you.” He didn’t quite manage to hide the grin creeping across his face before Michael looked up at him. Clearing his throat loudly, he rubbed his chin, hoping he’d covered the worst of it...

“It’s time that stopped.”

“And what? She’s got Adriel – Adriel – keeping an eye on her, and I seem to remember that last time you tried ordering her around, it didn’t work out so well.”

“You don’t see, do you? The longer this continues... the Fallen might be frightened by her, yes, but it won’t take them long to start seeing her as a weak point. And once they do, they will exploit that.”

“And the only one who gets to exploit Alice is you, right?”

“Enough!” Michael’s shout echoed around the room. Zadkiel wrinkled his nose in displeasure, but held his tongue.

“I know precisely how to deal with Alice,” Michael said, his voice suddenly soft and calm again. “And you are going to help me to do it.”

CHAPTER SEVEN Wreckage

“SO, WHAT HAPPENED to you, then?” Toby leaned against the edge of the desk, trying to look nonchalant. Alice had been waiting for this, ever since she’d stepped through the door that morning. As soon as Adriel sent her home – bruised and beaten and generally pissed off with the world, her life and herself – she had remembered that she’d agreed to go out with Toby. And that she’d agreed to arrange it the next day, before promptly vanishing. Way to make a great impression.

It took almost a week for the bruises to fade, and she had rehearsed all her possible excuses on her way into work, but had stopped when she saw the state of the street. There was even more broken glass carpeting the pavement than she remembered, glittering like so many diamonds. A burned-out car slumped in the middle of the road, half-overturned and still smoking. Across from it, a police van stood abandoned, its doors open, creaking slightly in the breeze. All its windows had been smashed and the metal grilles (or parts of them) were scattered across the street. One appeared to be sticking out of a newsagent’s window. There was rubbish everywhere: pages of damp newspapers, food wrappers, a brick... a discarded shoe. Just the one shoe; presumably, whoever had done this hopped home afterwards.

She stared around her. This was worse than she had seen it – and still the only window in the entire street which hadn’t been smashed or cracked was Adriel’s. Definitely not a coincidence.

Suddenly uneasy, she took a step forward, and into a puddle. It took a second for her to understand the rush of heat that swept through her, the flames erupting around her hands. She flapped ineffectually, trying to put them out. Nothing happened, and she jumped back, away from the puddle.

The puddle of blood.

The flames gradually died, leaving her breathless and aching and feeling like she’d been hit across the back of the head with a blunt instrument. It was while she was glaring at the brick on the floor that she spotted the newsagent across the road, broom in hand, staring at her. She smiled, and pointed to the air in front of her. “Wasp,” she said loudly, hoping that was a good enough explanation for the mad hopping he’d just seen.

And now, here was Toby asking where she’d been.

Good question. Good question.

“Well, Toby. Here’s the problem. I’m actually not quite what you think: I’m half angel, on my mother’s side. And she was in hell, and the devil possessed her and it’s a whole big thing. And then I came to work here – and did you know that your boss is actually the Angel of Death? – and I kind of got in a fight with a couple of Fallen angels and got seven hells kicked out of me, so the boss said I should take a couple of days. You know, just until the swelling went down. How’re you doing?”

She could say that. But it probably wouldn’t end well. So instead she mumbled something about a stomach bug, and went back to opening the post which had built up over the last few days. Adriel, it seemed, didn’t do post.

“I thought we were, you know, going out or something?”

“We were. Are. Will. Promise.”

“It’s fine, really. I just thought if you wanted to change your mind or something...”

“I promise I did not take a couple of days’ sick leave just to avoid you. There. Make you feel better?”

“Much. Cheers.” Toby visibly relaxed and picked up a handful of envelopes, slicing them open one at a time with his finger and handing them to Alice.

“How is it where you live?”

“Huh?” She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, other than with ‘messy.’

“The riots.” He nodded towards the window. On the other side, a man with a dustcart and a broom was fighting a losing battle with the litter blowing around. It didn’t look like he was even going to contemplate the rest of the debris.

“Oh. We seem to be okay. It’s pretty quiet where I am. And I don’t live right on the street, so...”

“Lucky. The shop below my mum’s flat got firebombed or something.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Scary, though. What’s the world coming to? It’s like it’s all going to hell.”

“Mmm.” Alice stared at a bill, and then concentrated very hard on dropping it into a filing tray. He was right: the world was going to hell. He just didn’t understand how right he was. And that was the way it was going to stay.

Despite Toby’s cheerful – and constant – chatter (particularly now he’d been reassured that no, she hadn’t been avoiding him) the mood was oppressive. And for an undertaker’s office, that was saying something. The usual calm and quiet of the office felt claustrophobic, itchy and unsettled. Outside, with the exception of the occasional policeman or pedestrian, the street stayed deserted. With the road closed, there was no traffic, and the garishly striped police tape wound between the lampposts kept most of the passers-by at bay. The sky overhead was a leaden grey, with clouds that hadn’t seemed to move all day.

There were no clients that morning, and no phone-calls, but Alice had plenty of catching up to do anyway, filing and sorting and tidying paperwork that she was absolutely sure hadn’t been in the desk drawers before she’d gone off. Apparently, it wasn’t only post that Adriel didn’t do.

She had just lifted another bundle of invoices and receipts out of the top drawer when her fingers brushed against something soft in the middle of the pile. Riffling through the papers, she slid the top half of the stack off to one side... and there, sitting on the paper, was a feather. It was almost as long as the sheets of paper it hid among, and it was white. This was no Earthbound’s feather: it had come from the wings of a full-blown angel. A Descended, there was no doubt about it; but whose was it? And what was it doing in her desk?

As she was sitting, staring at it, she heard a polite cough from beside her, and looked up, startled. So engrossed had she been that she hadn’t noticed Adriel appear alongside her.

“Alice? A word, if you would?”

“Hypotenuse.”

“I’m sorry? I don’t...”

“You said ‘a word.’ That’s a word.”