Rebellion

“‘People you care about’?” The corner of Adriel’s mouth twitched.

“You didn’t hear me say that.”

“My lips are sealed.”

The sound of batons on shields was almost deafening now, and the street was suddenly full of people – running, walking, jumping – their faces covered with scarves and hoods. Adriel slipped out of the door.

A bottle smashed on the pavement outside: the burning rag stuffed into its mouth falling clear and smouldering harmlessly on the ground.

She had to go too, didn’t she? It was where she belonged, after all – so much more there than in an office. Her eyes fixed on the crowd, Alice followed Adriel through the door, leaving it open behind her.

As she passed, the rag on the pavement burst into bright orange flames.

AS SHE LOST herself among the bodies, the office’s back door opened and Toby ran in.

“I don’t care, alright. It’s mental out there and I’m not leaving y...” He tailed off, seeing the door swinging open, and Alice vanishing into the mob.

“Alice! Alice!” He ran to the front door, gripping the sides of the frame and screaming her name. She didn’t stop: in fact, he could barely see her – only a flash of her jacket here, the top of her head. His voice was just one among many.

She didn’t hear him. She didn’t want him.

But he couldn’t leave her.

Shaking his head and against his better judgement, Toby turned the collar of his jacket up and plunged into the riot after her.

A WAVE OF NOISE swallowed Toby whole. The road had become a corridor of bodies: colliding with one another; dancing around one another, arms aloft, faces hidden behind black and white patterned scarves. A woman with long blonde hair had climbed onto the ruins of a car and was waving a child’s doll, its blazing hair dripping molten plastic on the people below as its face twisted grotesquely. The woman laughed as she threw the burning doll into the crowd.

Someone nearby was screaming; as Toby staggered through the crush of bodies, he saw a man – a kid, really – lying on the ground. Blood was pouring out of a gash in his thigh, and his face was a pale shade of grey. There were dark hollows under his eyes. It was the young woman crouched beside him who was screaming, a brick in her hand.

Jeers from somewhere behind him made Toby look away. The crowd had parted around a man in a crumpled suit. He had a phone in his hand; he’d been filming the mob, and the mob had turned on him.

The first missile landed at the man’s feet and shattered: a glass bottle. The second clipped his knee, forcing him to step back. The third hit him in the side of his face.

As he fell, the baying crowd reared back before collapsing in on him like a pack of animals.

In his mind’s eye, Toby saw himself plunging through them, pulling them aside until he reached the poor bastard at the centre; hauling him to his feet and dragging him out... getting him to the police, to an ambulance, to safety, to anywhere but here.

But Toby didn’t move. He stood right where he was. He heard the soft, sickening sound of flesh on flesh; of bricks and bones, of the mob laughing as they broke their prey... and he didn’t move. He couldn’t.

It was the thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud of batons on shields that pulled him out of his stupor.

Turning his back on the horror in front of him, Toby began frantically scanning the crowd for Alice. Jostled from every direction by the bodies crammed around him, he looked in vain for her face. He fought to stay upright, to not be swept along by the mob.

He was still searching as the first canister of tear-gas sailed over his head in a graceful arc and landed twenty feet behind him with a clatter and a whoosh.

Still the heartbeat of the riot sounded above the screams and the shouts and the chants and the shattering of windows.

And beneath his feet, beneath the feet of the world, unseen and unheard and unfelt... the balance tipped.

For the first time in forever, the Fallen were in control.

CHAPTER EIGHT Ring of Steel

ALICE HAD PUSHED her way through the crowd early on – or rather, it had parted before her. Perhaps they looked at her and saw the faintest of heat-hazes about her shoulders. Perhaps they saw the tarmac of the road bubble beneath her feet, or the tiny sparks that spat from her fingertips.

Or perhaps they saw the look on her face and decided that it was best to get out of her way.

One – a teenage boy barely old enough to shave, scarf pulled up to his eyes – had tried to slow her down. He had held his ground and sniffed at her disdainfully, and pulled a knife out of his jacket pocket. He screamed as molten metal poured from between his fingers, and Alice moved on.

This wasn’t just a riot. It was angry and it was chaotic and it was cold – much colder than it should have been. The temperature had dropped by several degrees in the last hour, and that could mean only one thing.

This was them.

This was the Fallen. Rimmon she’d already seen – and that was most likely part of his plan, if he had one – but it wasn’t him she wanted. She was looking for Xaphan.

Memories flooded her mind, of a metal cage, a scarred face with a cruel smile, and a man strapped to a wheel, swallowed by hungry black fire. The leaves on a plane tree at the side of the road began to curl and shrivel.

“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself as a tall man in a black jacket and hood barged into her, almost knocking her sideways – but recoiling when he saw the scorch mark on his coat. He screamed and lunged at her, but it was so little effort to dodge him that she almost laughed as he tumbled into a heap beside her. She grabbed his shoulder, half-hauling him to his feet; he swung at her again and she ducked, popping back up to yank his hood down. “Go home!” she shouted, looking into his startled eyes. All she saw there was fear.

The clouds overhead had thickened, bolstered by smoke, turning the afternoon to dusk. Against the chaos of the crowd stood the immovable police line, batons and shields raised, helmet visors down; a wall of armour and flesh and bone. But all walls can be broken, and Alice watched as the first brick smashed into a shield. There was a cheer as the officer behind it staggered slightly, then drew himself up again. She could feel it all around her: the fear, the pain, the hate. It was carried on the air like a sea breeze.

Another brick smacked into a shield and, as one, the police line took a step forward.

One more brick, and a cheer from the crowd as the riot police beat their batons against their shields. The cheer became a chant, and the sound of baton-on-shield became a drum, and the clouds overhead were growing thicker and thicker...

The lightning bolt hit with no warning. The chanting and the cheering and the jeering were cut short, replaced by a stunned silence.

The air smelled of ozone; of bleach and metal and blue glass. Alice knew what that meant.

She clambered onto the top of a litter bin. Slowly straightening up, she could see clear over everyone and into the centre of the road, where the lightning had struck. A large gap had formed in the crowd. All thoughts of rioting had evaporated as the crowd stared at the feathery lines radiating from the spot where the lightning had struck.

And at the man who stood at the centre of the shattered circle of tarmac.

The man who stood with his head bowed and his hands folded.

The man who, as the crowd watched in a combination of terror and awe and utter confusion, slowly opened his wide white wings.