“It was in my shoulder. In. My. Shoulder. I don’t even know where to start with that.” She turned sideways in the chair, rolling her injured shoulder towards him. Two holes were clearly visible in the fabric of her jacket, and Adriel looked from the fang to Alice and back again.
“So it was you who had the run-in with Murmur. I had my suspicions. The fire, for one...” He sighed, and took a small box out of one of the drawers of his desk, dropping the tooth into it and tucking the whole thing back out of sight. “This is why I wanted you here, where I could keep an eye on you.”
“Keep an eye on me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Precisely what I said.”
“No. No, no, no. You don’t all get to treat me like I’m some barely housetrained puppy that someone’s left with you for the weekend...”
“Puppy? I’m afraid I don’t follow the analogy.”
“It’s just... it’s like... Look, it sounded really good in my head, okay?” She slumped back in the chair.
“I’m sure it did.” He stood up. “Come with me.”
“Last time I listened to an angel who said that, I...” She tailed off when she saw the look he was giving her. The whole room darkened under his glare; shadows pooled in the corners and crept along the walls.
“It was not a request, Alice.”
Of course it wasn’t.
TRYING HER HARDEST to ignore her aching... well, everything, Alice followed him out of his office and towards the steel swing doors. The lights were off, and Alice could barely make out where his black wings stopped and the dark of the hallway began... but she knew where he was going.
The mortuary.
ALICE HAD YET to venture into the embalming suite. Not that she had any particular desire to go there, of course, but for Adriel to casually saunter through the door and tell her to follow him felt... odd. Particularly when she distinctly remembered him telling her she didn’t have to go back there. She’d hoped that would be a permanent thing. Clearly not.
The lights flicked on automatically as Adriel walked in, and a shroud of cool air wrapped around them. It smelled like disinfectant: to be fair, she’d been expecting worse. The ceiling was higher than the rest of the office, and was punctuated by a variety of ducts, pipes and vents. Around the walls was an array of what looked suspiciously like kitchen cupboards, and a plastic skeleton dangling from a noose. Alice raised an eyebrow at it, but Adriel simply shook his head. “It takes a certain kind of man to live with the dead. It isn’t your place to judge.”
“Maybe not, but that’s just all kinds of wrong.”
“This coming from the woman who just burned a man alive?”
“Woah there. Hold on.” She pointed a finger at him. “Firstly, that wasn’t a man, that was a Fallen. And secondly, how the hell do you know that’s what happened?”
“He died, yes?”
“Well, yes. But that... oh. Angel of Death. Got it.”
“Indeed.”
The centre of the room was dominated by an enormous steel table, draped in an extremely white sheet.
There was something underneath the sheet. Alice watched, feeling slightly queasy as Adriel pulled it aside, leaving the table and its contents exposed and horribly spotlit.
It was a pair of wings. A pair of wings which had been torn from the back of an angel.
They lay outstretched on the steel of the table, side by side, the feathers bedraggled and sad, and matted with blood. Those on the outer edges of the wings were slightly blackened, and Alice caught the smell of burning. Her stomach turned a quick somersault, but somehow, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out for them...
At the touch of her fingers, the wings burst into flame, but they did not burn. Instead, the flames settled, quietly scudding across the surface of the broken feathers. And Alice looked in horror at Adriel.
“This is one of Michael’s choir.”
“He was.”
“What happened?”
“The Fallen.”
“They did this?” Alice looked back at the wings spread out on the embalming table, the flames dying out as they fanned out over the feathers. She could see the bones, the muscles and sinews bunched beneath the flesh and feathers, and even she understood that this angel – whoever he was – had been tortured. The bones were broken; the muscles twisted... the wings ripped from his back.
“This is a message,” Adriel said, pulling the sheet back over the broken wings. “Not a subtle one, either. They are coming. No – more than that: they are already here. And for all that you want to fight, Alice, you are too much a human for this.”
“That’s what Xaphan said. In hell. Just before he murdered my friend and made me watch. He said I was too human.”
“Just because Xaphan is one of the Fallen doesn’t mean he can’t tell the truth when it suits him.”
“He was wrong. Still is.” She curled her fingers tightly in on her palms.
“I understand – but don’t confuse the will to fight with the strength to do so. You are like them, but not one of them.”
“How?” Alice held out her hands, and fire danced across her palms; spun around her wrists. “Tell me how. You look at me and tell me how...”
“Because you can die, Alice. All too easily, you can die.”
Adriel smoothed the sheet over the wings and quietly walked away, the steel doors swinging shut behind him and the lights switching themselves off as he left. And Alice was alone in the darkness with only dead wings and fire for company.
She thought about it for a moment, and decided that it wasn’t enough.
“No. You don’t get to say that. You don’t. You don’t get to take away everything I had, and leave me with this and tell me that I’m not one of you.” She stormed down the corridor after him, catching up with him as he sat back down in his chair. “He died, didn’t he? That angel – whoever he was. He died.”
“Yes, he did.”
“So. You said it yourself: everyone dies. Even angels, right?”
Adriel simply blinked up at her. “What is this obsession of yours? This need to be one thing or another? Why can you not simply be what you are?”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.”
“And it’s precisely what makes you human.” He steepled his fingers together and peered at her over the top of them. “Angels do not doubt what they are. Angels do not question their place. They simply are. But you? You want to be this so very, very much. You want it so badly that it burns you. Metaphorically speaking,” he added, seeing Alice open her mouth to interrupt. “Be as you are and be content. Besides,” he said, shuffling papers on his desk, “have you not understood what it is to be an angel? I would have thought Mallory could tell you that. Pain and war and little else.”
“That’s not what Mallory would say.”
“Not what he’d say, perhaps, but isn’t it what he thinks?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to ask him. He left.”
“And so you try to fill the space he has left. Be careful, Alice. The footprints you follow are not meant for you.” He blinked again, and it was clear that he had no interest in discussing the matter any further.
Alice was furious. More than furious. “I’m not afraid of the Fallen,” she said quietly. It wasn’t entirely true, but she said it anyway. Her shoulder was starting to throb.
“Neither are they. You must understand – the angels aren’t afraid of the Fallen. They’re afraid of death.”
“Of you.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He folded his hands neatly on the blotter on top of his desk. “You’re quite right. Everything dies, Alice. But believe me when I tell you it takes considerably less to cause your death than it would, say, Mallory’s. And angels have died for this war. Many of them. Does that not suggest that perhaps you should fear the Fallen? Have you seen what they do to your world?” He pointed at the door; at the looting, the violence... the madness that had come from nowhere and seemed to be building with every passing day. The streets outside were a carpet of broken glass. It was quiet out there now, but it wouldn’t last.