Rebellion

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Thirty Bullets

VIN LISTENED TO their footsteps fading. He was alone with the Fallen.

A voice danced on the edge of his memory: a voice and a shadow, which asked him if he knew what he was getting into.

There was one way to find out.

He balled his hands into fists, squeezing them until his knuckles turned white and his nails bit into his palms. Blood seeped from between his fingers, dripping onto the floor – and still the Fallen waited. They were smiling. They thought this was going to be easy.

Like hell it was.

Vin snapped his fingers open, and braced himself as they charged him.

THE CORRIDOR SLOPED down, curving in a long spiral. Alice had no idea where they were. She couldn’t hear anything from behind them, and it frightened her. What had happened to Vin? Flames sprang to life around her wrists, glowing gently as she ran. Mallory was just ahead of her, but spent more time checking back over his shoulder than he did looking where he was going. Jester ran alongside him, his face frozen.

Alice could tell what Mallory was thinking, even before he slammed into the wall and stopped running.

“I’m going back.”

“But...”

“Don’t argue with me, Alice. He’s not following, and they aren’t screaming, which means Vin’s in trouble. Get Jester to one of the Archangels: Zadkiel, if you can. Take this.” He thrust one of his guns at her, and she took it like it might bite her, holding it as far away from her body as possible. “You really do have a strange attitude to guns.”

“Just because you like them doesn’t mean I have to.”

“You will when they save your life.” He held her gaze. “Go.”

He turned to run back up the corridor, just as the first of the gas grenades landed at their feet.

VIN SNAPPED HIS fingers open, and braced himself as they charged.

The air in front of him shook; everything went grey.

Through the mist, he saw Xaphan haul Florence off her feet, spinning back into a doorway... and nothing else. There was nothing else there. Just the empty corridor, filled with dust that swirled around him, settling on the floor, on his shoulders. The air tasted oily, somehow...

He lifted his hands; stared at them. “Wh –?”

He was so busy staring at his fingers in shock that he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him in time, and didn’t stand a chance of avoiding the metal bar that smashed into the back of his head.

As he crumpled to the floor, Xaphan dropped the bar with a clatter. “That’s quite enough of that,” he said, dusting off his hands.

GAS AND SMOKE filled the corridor: thick, greenish-white. Alice’s eyes streamed and she stumbled forward into Mallory, who caught her and set her back on her feet. “Change of plan,” he shouted into her ear over the hiss of the smoke, taking back the gun he had handed her. “Where’s Jester?”

There was no sign of him; not that they could have made him out amid the smoke clogging the passageway.

“Jester?” Mallory called his name, but there was no answer. “Jester!”

Still no response.

Alice could barely breathe, and she clung to Mallory, gasping for air. The gas scorched her throat, her eyes, her lungs.

“We have to get out of here...” Even Mallory was choking, his eyes red. “Stay with me.”

They staggered away from the wall. A soft thwomp from somewhere in the smoke was followed by the clatter and hiss of another grenade, and the gas drowning them thickened. Alice felt the world spin and leaned into Mallory’s side, hoping he wouldn’t let her fall.

The haze thinned, further ahead. It was still hard to see, was still hard to breathe, but it was better, and Alice could at least make out the point where the walls ended and the floor began.

A red door stood out in the murky air and Mallory threw himself at it. It gave with little resistance, opening not onto a sheer cliff, but into a small, mostly empty room. A room filled with clean air. They lay on their backs on the floor, gulping air into their aching lungs, and Alice thought that was it: they had made it. But Mallory was already pulling himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear it as the wall of smoke and gas headed their way. “Come on. We’ve got to go, Alice. Get up. Get up!”

“I can’t...”

“You have to! Get up!” He looked around the room. There was very little of any use here: just a small wooden table and a long bench with a high back. A tapestry hung on one wall.

“Shit,” he muttered... and then he saw the tapestry move.

He was across the room before Alice could even register what he was doing, wrapping a hand around the tapestry and pulling. The fabric came away from the wall, bringing the rod that held it up.

Behind it was a staircase.

It wasn’t much: a tiny spiral stairway that looked like it had been cut out of the wall rather than built, and it only led up, but it was something.

“Alice!” Mallory pointed to the stairs, one eye on the door.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No more. No more running. Unless you’re coming with me, I’m done.”

“You’re not done. You’re not done because I say you’re not. Now get up.”

“No.” Even the word was an effort. She closed her eyes.

The faint clicking sound made her open them again.

She was looking straight into the barrel of Mallory’s gun. Behind it, his face was dark, his mouth grim.

“I’m not leaving you. We left Vin: I won’t leave you.”

“Yes, Alice, you will. Now get up.”

Alice got up, pressing herself back against the wall, edging around it towards the staircase as the barrel of Mallory’s Colt followed her. She knew he wouldn’t shoot – at least, she thought he wouldn’t – and she hesitated.

All he said was: “Go.”

She ducked into the stairway, her foot on the first stair, and froze. Mallory had turned away and was standing in the middle of the room, his back to her. His arms hung by his sides, a gun in each hand; his wings opened wide and shining as he watched the door.

Alice took one last look back at him, and she started running up the stairs.

THE SMOKE HUNG in the doorway, not moving one way or the other. Just sitting there, sullen. Mallory didn’t move. He was watching the door. And he had a horrible feeling he knew who was about to come through it.

It was a vague shadow at first, gradually taking shape inside the cloud, as shoes clicked closer and closer on the stone floor. There was a rapid crunching, grating noise and then the ping of something small hitting the floor and rolling. A shotgun cartridge rolled to a halt at Mallory’s feet. An extremely large shotgun cartridge. He glanced down at it, and raised his eyes just as the cloud of smoke cleared around the man striding into the room, the shotgun clasped to his chest and his red eyes shining.

Mallory had been expecting Lucifer. And given that Lucifer’s body was, at that moment, locked up several