Lightning filled the hall; slamming into the walls and floor and curling around the columns. It lit the whole space up with bright, clear light, and the smell of ozone filled the air. Gabriel and Michael were lost in the glare... then, as soon as it had come, it was gone: the light fading to a dim point on Gabriel’s chest, and then to nothing.
Slowly, Gabriel stood. He stretched out his wings, and Alice bit her lip. They were restored: bright white and crackling with electricity, and sweeping the floor behind him as he stretched.
Gabriel was an Archangel again.
“Oh, shit,” said Vin, speaking for all of them. Gabriel heard him; his head snapped round, blinking at them. A cold smile flashed across his face, but was gone in an instant.
“Just what we need,” Mallory said out of the side of his mouth. If Gabriel heard the barb, he didn’t rise to it. Instead, he straightened up and looked Michael in the eye, nodding once. Michael nodded back, his eyes searching Gabriel’s face, then he turned abruptly and went to inspect one of the fireplaces, where two members of his choir were standing to attention. The others might as well have melted into the stone or blown away on the wind; there was no sign of them. The lump in the fireplace smouldered gently.
“Well, Mallory,” Gabriel said, the smile spreading back across his face. “Perhaps, seeing as you and your little friends are still here, you might like to make yourselves useful by finding out exactly what happened to those prisoners you seem to have lost...”
“I lost?” Mallory’s jaw tensed.
“Your prisoners, your problem.” Gabriel arched an eyebrow at them.
“Just like old times, I see.”
“Just like old times.” Gabriel locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Find them. That’s an order.”
“BUT WE ALREADY know what’s happened here: even Alice can work this one out, right?”
“Oi!”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah, right.”
Alice and Vin were slouching down yet another corridor behind Mallory, ‘following orders.’ Vin had taken to making little quote marks in the air with his fingers every time the phrase came up. Mallory had taken to kicking him every time he did it.
Zadkiel said something about needing to check the remaining corridors. “The priory is secure, but I need to be sure there’s no more surprises.”
“That wasn’t a surprise. That was a diversion, and you know it.” Mallory didn’t bother to hide the frustration in his voice – Archangel or not. Zadkiel’s shoulders dropped a little.
“I know. The question is: what didn’t they want us to see?”
“A big show of force and Xaphan and Florence disappearing... you don’t think those two might be slightly connected?”
“If you think that’s all there is to this, Mallory, you’re as big a fool as Gabriel seems to take you for.”
Zadkiel flicked his fingers up in a gesture which could have been a salute and smiled sadly, handing Mallory’s second gun back to him.
“Thank you for the weapon. Castor! With me.” He shot Alice a look, and strode off down the corridor with Castor, leaving the three of them alone.
“The guy’s a master of the backhanded compliment, I’ll give him that,” Mallory sighed. “I’m still not sure how to take that one.”
“I guess it depends on what you make of Gabriel,” said Alice.
Mallory snorted. “Mmm. Speaking of whom, seeing as Senor Sparky is back in Michael’s good graces, we’d better trot along on our little errand, hadn’t we?” He checked the gun’s magazine, ejected it and slotted in a fresh one from his pocket. “And after that little performance, I don’t care what Xaph’s got to say for himself. If he so much as sniffs at me, I’m going to give him an exciting new hole to breathe out of.”
THEY AMBLED THROUGH the corridors without any real urgency, and Alice wondered if they were as tired as she was. Neither Mallory nor Vin showed any sign of flagging, but both of them were dusty and covered in battle scars. There was no way they could still be feeling fresh. She caught herself... and then relaxed. There was no Zadkiel here, peering into her thoughts. Knowing that felt like a huge weight lifting from her shoulders: she hadn’t realised how hard she found it, always feeling that someone might be listening. Strangely, she didn’t care if Michael could see what was going on in her head: he wouldn’t like what he found, and if she was honest, it served him right. Zadkiel, though... Zadkiel was different. Unlike Michael, it appeared that he really did listen. And he remembered.
A rattling sound pulled her back to the corridor. Mallory was shaking the handle of a door, a little louder than was strictly necessary. “I think it’s locked,” Alice said pointedly.
“The question is whether it’s locked from the outside, or the inside. And if it’s locked from the inside, who locked it?”
“I also think you’re taking this a bit personally.”
“You bet I’m taking it personally.” Mallory gave up rattling the handle and kicked the door. It sprang free of its hinges with a popping sound and dropped through the frame, leaving Mallory tumbling after it.
Into thin air.
Mallory swore as he hurtled down the sheer stone wall and toward the rocks far below, snapping his wings open and beating them once, twice to bring him back up to the level of the doorway. He floated outside, peering back in.
“Well, that was unexpected.” He folded his wings as he stepped back onto firm ground, and leaned out into empty space again, looking down at the rocks.
“I should have known it was you lot from the noise,” said a new voice, and Alice spun round.
There, framed in a doorway across the corridor – one which did not appear to lead to a messy death – was a solidly-built man with green eyes and black hair slashed across with white. The shadows of old bruises were visible across one of his cheeks, but he looked well enough, and he was watching them with barely-disguised amusement.
Jester.
Alice was almost knocked off her feet as Vin barged past her, charging Jester and flinging an arm around his shoulders, slapping him on the back... then apparently changing his mind and standing back with his arms folded.
“Do you have any idea how worried we were? How worried I was?”
“No, Mum.”
“Piss off.” Vin scowled – particularly when he heard Mallory snigger.
He turned back to Jester. “You do realise the mess you’ve made, right?”
“Mess? What mess?” Jester looked puzzled, glancing from Vin to Mallory and Alice. He closed his eyes slowly. Sadly. “It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Florence? Yes.”
“What’s my sister done this time?”
“Where do I start?”
“Probably after I tell you that whatever you think, it’s not true.”
“I had a horrible feeling you were about to say that...”
What Jester told them made Alice’s stomach knot. Mallory nodded, his face sober. Vin turned an increasingly queasy shade of grey beneath his sunglasses.
Jester had said he needed some time, and had gone for a walk on the streets of Hong Kong; not going anywhere particular, just walking. Hands in his pockets, he had wandered through Sai Wan and as far as Fung Mat Road – almost as far as the market and the water. He’d lost track of time, been waiting to cross the road... and that was when he thought he had seen her. Just a glimpse of her, through a crowd. Florence. He froze, and then he had started to edge through the people around him, shouldering them aside until he had a clear view of her. It was her. Standing on the opposite side. Alone.
Something had made him turn around. He didn’t know what it was, even as he told Alice and the others about it. But something had, and as he turned, he saw her standing behind him. With Xaphan.