Chapter 15

We stood side by side each one fightin' for the other,
we said until we died
Blood Brothers, Bruce Springsteen

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 10^th

Sophie sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the window to where Gabriel stood in the biting, early-morning wind. The hard, stern set of his face seemed at odds with the bright, tinny music of the children's programme Christophe had on behind her. The music muffled the sound of Caerys' approach, and she jumped a little as a tendril of red hair brushed against her neck a moment before arms wrapped gently round her from behind.

She turned, wet-eyed and wrapped her own arms around Caerys' neck, burying herself into the offered shoulder, feeling the warmth and support there.

"Are you alright, Soph?"

"He looks so... I don't know, I don't think I've ever seen someone look like that."

"Hopeless?" Caerys suggested. "Lost? And very definitely very, very angry."

"At us, do you think?"

"At life. At fate, I suppose, given his views on God."

"Will he be alright?"

"I don't know. He won't be the same, I don't think he can go back."

"Why not?"

"He tried to pretend like none of it really mattered, it was all inconsequential and he could just get on with his self-imposed exile instead. Then she was back, and he cared — instantly. All that time, all that effort, and his humanity was a half-inch below the surface and ready to burst free.

"Knowing that, he can't push it down and pretend that it's not there any more."

"So what happens?" Sophie whispered, hugging herself against a cold that had little to do with the open door to the patio.

"I don't know."

"We fight." Gabriel's terse voice caught them both by surprise.

"Gabriel," Sophie turned, keeping a hold on Caerys' slim-fingered hand as she did. "We don't have to hurry into this."

"This isn't hurrying," he assured her, sliding the door shut behind him as he entered. "Yes, I'm angry. Best thing to do is use that anger, and at the moment we have a good idea where Gilgamesh is — there's no reason to doubt that Camael was right about his operation."

"You know this is just a displacement mechanism, don't you?" Caerys interrupted, and Sophie tried to pull her back, gently, from the confrontation.

"No, it's not." He shook his head, not looking away. "I can see why you'd think that, but it isn't."

"Displacement mechanism?" Sophie asked, as Gabriel perched on the edge of the other bed, a bundle of tension and barely suppressed anxiousness waiting to burst into action.

"Rather than deal with what's happening, he runs off and does something that requires all his attention, and keeps doing it..."

"Évitement." Sophie nodded.

"What?" Caerys looked bemused.

"Avoiding the issue, basically," Gabriel translated, leaning forward slightly. "It's not."

"It has been so far," Caerys pointed out. "Your... Crusade, or whatever it was."

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But I thought there was no hope, that she was dead and it was all over."

"And now you know that she's out there, somewhere, is that it?"

"We finish this, with your father and mine, and then we settle down and try to find a way to rescue her."

"I don't know if that's even possible." Caerys shook her head, but Gabriel raised a hand to cut her off.

"You're new to this, I appreciate that. It seems unlikely, but then a month ago so did demons and dagger activated wings."

"So," Sophie, stood up, brushing the creases out of her skirt with stiff, angry strokes of her hands, "now that there's something in it for you you'd like us to stay, is that it?" Gabriel looked up, surprised at the outburst, and reached up casually to catch her wrist as she aimed a slap at his face. She carried on as though it had struck.

"You were all for ending this and leaving us at a roadside somewhere to try and rebuild our lives a few days ago. Now we have something you want we can stay?"

"That's not fair, Soph." Caerys tried to placate her, but was shrugged off. Gabriel released her wrist, which he'd only gently held, and lowered his hands to his side.

"A few days ago, Sophie, I was planning to go back to my 'displacement mechanism'" — he turned a wry look Caerys' way — "after this was all over. It wouldn't have been a place for you. Now... now I'm looking to save someone that's important to me, someone that I think has helped us — "

"To her cost," Caerys interrupted, earning a slight nod of appreciation from Gabriel.

"I wouldn't have dumped you with nothing, Sophie," he tried to reassure her, "I still won't. If you don't want to take part then I'll set you up with new identities, new lives as best I can, and settle you both somewhere comfortable and convenient..."

"I want to go home." Sophie sat back down, heavily, all the righteous anger slipping out of her as she settled into place. "I... I just want to go back to how it was."

"I told you that he couldn't go back." Caerys squatted on her haunches, taking Sophie's limp hands in her own and lowering her head to look into the deep, brown, sad eyes. "He's not the only one."

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 10^th

"How are you going to do this?" Caerys followed him into his own room, tousling Christophe's hair as she passed him on the bed, playing a game on Gabriel's laptop.

"Do what?"

"My father. Your father, even, come to that."

"Your father, if Camael was right, is conducting another one of his 'rituals' in an industrial warehouse not far from here. The basic plan is to take out the sentries, booby-trap the doors, then blow out the power. The explosion should catch their attention, the booby-traps get anyone trying to run, and in the dark I mop up the rest."

"It won't work." She lay out on the bed next to Christophe, sparing a brief glance for the screen before turning back to Gabriel. He swung the chair around to sit astride it, resting his arms on the back.

"Assuming, for a moment, that my wounded pride at your lack of faith can stand the advice — why not?"

"Cutting the power won't help you. My father, and most of the people that work for him, can see in the dark. Do you remember the warehouse where you found me?" She shivered slightly at the memory herself, her eyes staring off into the distance for a moment.

"Yes." Gabriel prompted her, gently, pulling her back from her recollections.

"They were caught by surprise, attacked from both sides, and most of them escaped."

"Alright, how?"

"How did they survive? They have magical protection from your usual weapons. Explosives won't make much of a difference, bullets certainly won't. They're expecting your sort of approach — you learnt from your father, and it's him they'll be expecting, if anyone."

"Magic?"

"Possibly. Your father doesn't tend to use it openly. He bolsters himself and his people with it, prepares and then sets them loose."

"Alright..."

"We don't have a great deal in the way of weapons anyway," Caerys pointed out.

"I have some in storage," he muttered in an off-hand way, eyes fixed on the floor as he worked his way through possibilities.

"You have more weapon caches than homes?"

"Nature of the job," he explained, and stopped as he looked at her, seeing the familiar golden sheen to her eyes. "Caerys?" She didn't answer. "Christophe, go fetch your mother."

"Pardonez-moi?"

"Ta mere, Christophe!"

"Oúi."

The boy practically flew, catching the tone of Gabriel's voice. By the time he returned, with his mother in tow, Caerys had crossed to the window and was staring out across the city.

"What is it?" Sophie asked, quietly, not recognising the expression on Gabriel's face.

"She's back." He smiled. "Giselle's back!"

"No, she isn't." Caerys turned, the glow fading as she did, and laid an apologetic hand on his shoulder. "Your father's back."

Big Yellow Storage, South Queensferry, December 10^th

Nestled in the minibus Gabriel had hired, Caerys and Sophie stared out in silence at the leaden skies that hung low and ponderous over the bulk of the Forth bridge.

"How long is he going to be?" Caerys wondered aloud, not for the first time, and Sophie laid a hand on her arm to try and calm her.

"He said he'd be back before lunch," she pointed out. "That's still an hour or more away."

"I could be out there looking with him." Caerys turned round in her seat again, obviously frustrated. "I could be looking from in here."

"You were the one that told him looking with his eyes was probably safer than trying to sneak a peek in with magic."

"I have eyes," Caerys spun back like a surly teenager — she was a frustrated teenager, Sophie had to remind herself — and resumed her overly forceful manipulation of the radio controls.

"I think he was more worried about your big feet," Sophie pointed out, trying to hold back a smile. Christophe's jaw dropped open as he realised what his mother had said, and he hunkered down a little lower behind the lap-top screen.

"Big feet?" Caerys spun, irritation flashing in her eyes for a moment until she saw the sparkle of humour in Sophie's face.

"I'll have you know my feet are in perfect proportion to my height..."

"Yes, that would have been a problem, too," Sophie agreed, and couldn't hold back the laughter.

"You're nervous," Caerys noted, when their laughter had died down.

"You're not?"

"Of course I am," Caerys admitted. "But it's new for you — you've been scared until now."

"I can see an end to it, now," Sophie admitted after a moment's thought, as though that explained it...

"It's a risk, you know."

"I know, but... we're running out of places to run, and Gabriel's new weapons — and your magic — aren't going to be a surprise for much longer."

"I kn... AARGHH!" Caerys jumped in surprise as Gabriel pulled open the door behind her, placing a hand in the small of her back to stop her falling out.

"Jesus, Gabriel..." She finally got herself under control, slapping his arm gently. "A little warning, next time."

"If it's your father," he pointed out, "you won't get a warning. That would have been a shot in the back, or a claw up under the ribs, a knife across the throat."

"Alright, Gabriel." Sophie sobered quickly, and he stopped, staring at the pair of them.

"I'm sorry, but you have to be ready tonight. I can't leave you behind, but you'll have to keep your heads down and be alert."

"I know." Caerys shuffled across the transmission tunnel, lifting herself over the gearstick to allow Gabriel to get in. "But that's tonight."

"No, that's all the time," he corrected her. "Until either they're dead or we are."

"Gabriel!" Sophie pressed her hands over Christophe's ears. He rolled his eyes at Caerys and Gabriel while his mother worried.

"We can't afford to be blasé," he pointed out.

"We understand," Sophie told him, sincerely, taking her hands back. "What did you find out?"

"Well, the bad news is, my father intends to assault Gilgamesh tonight."

"C'est bien, non?" Sophie asked. Caerys looked back and forth between her and Gabriel looking for a translation.

"She asked if that was a good thing," Christophe finally offered, putting the red-head out of her misery.

"You're going to have to learn to speak French before I can take you to visit my parents," Sophie offered, with a gentle smile.

"The French are very protective about their language," Gabriel pointed out.

"I can speak some French," Caerys snapped back.

"Really?" Gabriel obviously disbelieved her.

"Yeah, like... Il semblait dans une autre monde, cours te cacher." Sophie looked impressed, as Gabriel turned to hide his smile, catching Caerys' nervous look as he did.

"Do you know what that means?" Sophie asked.

"Something like... it looks like he's in another world, run and hide."

"Other worlds? Is that something magic?" Sophie wondered, and Gabriel couldn't hold back the snort of laughter that escaped.

"Any more?" he finally asked, his tone deliberately light.

"Avec tes yeux si bleu, moi j'ai flashe a nous deux... um... un grand baiser d'eternité." Growing in confidence, she rested on the back of the chair, staring at Sophie. "With your eyes so blue, I've got a crush on you, I'm so in love with you..." She trailed off as she watched Sophie's expression change.

"Poetry doesn't always translate well, you know," she offered, diplomatically.

"Are you going to dye your hair?" Gabriel asked.

"Get lost!" Caerys mock-snapped at him, and he laughed as he keyed the ignition, rumbling the big diesel engine to life.

"They're both excerpts from Blondie songs," he explained, over his shoulder, and Caerys slumped into her seat. "Buckle up."

"Get lost," Caerys snapped at him again, with a grin.

"Buckle up, or you'll get arrested. It's a law here, and we don't need any police trouble," he pointed out. Sophie leant forward from the seat behind.

"You know, everyone starts to learn a foreign language somewhere... I remember sitting in English classes at the age of ten or eleven and having to sing 'Baa, Baa Black Sheep'..."

"Blondie," Gabriel pointed out, "is a definite improvement."

"I'm only nineteen, I've not had a chance to learn a foreign language yet." Caerys tried to justify herself. Gabriel started to ask Christophe how old he was, until Sophie's finger flicked the back of his ear.

"We're getting off track." He changed the topic quickly. "As I was saying, the bad news is that my father intends to attack Gilgamesh tonight."

"Should we not just let him?" Sophie wondered.

"No." This time, Caerys was in her element. "If he kills Marduk, he'll take Marduk's powers, and be even harder to defeat. Worse than that, in most cases if you've derived your power from someone you can't use it against them, they're immune — Gabriel needs Light and Dark to fight his father because his powers probably won't work against him."

"So, if your father takes them from his father, he'll be just as immune?"

"Probably." Caerys shrugged to admit she didn't know everything.

"We can't take the risk," Gabriel confirmed, turning onto the motorway that headed over the bridge, heading towards the North bank of the river across the massive structure of the bridge.

"The way you said it, though, makes it sound like you've got good news, too?" Caerys pointed out, and Gabriel dipped his hand into his shirt pocket, pulling out a small memory stick.

"I managed to download my father's situation report of Gilgamesh's site here. We'll need to take a look at the place before we start, but nothing too rigorous. That means we can move up our attack plans."

"I thought we needed the dark." Sophie countered.

"We do — I was looking at hitting the place at about ten o'clock to give me time enough to scout around."

"And now?" Caerys wondered.

"It's winter — it starts to get dark around four o'clock here. By seven it'll be just as dark as at ten."

"And then we go in?"

"Then I go in," he clarified. "You wait outside."

"Same thing." Sophie rested a hand on his shoulder, with surprising warmth. "Same thing."

Dunfermline, Fife, December 10^th

Gabriel scrolled through the detailed reports at the table, while Sophie and Caerys sipped gently at their soup and stared across the broad expanse of the Firth of Forth at Edinburgh clustered low on the far bank in the shadow of the mountains.

"It's not like real mountains," Caerys observed. "Mount Hood's huge compared to those, especially if you sit on a boat on Trillium Lake."

"You don't have Calton Hill beneath it, though, do you?" Gabriel looked up, pointing. "Nelson's monument, the unfinished Greek Temple there — Britain might be small, but it packs a lot into that package." He knew the conversation for the deliberate distraction that it was, taking their minds away from the prospect of the evening's activities, but he let it continue, flowing with the conversation as best he could while he studied the plans before him.

Sophie and Caerys continued in the background, discussing the relative merits of the architecture of Paris against the variety of natural beauty in Oregon. Both of them, despite the relaxed tone of the conversation, jumped a little when the lid of the laptop clicked shut.

"Time for my last look around," he announced, and the atmosphere faltered and died. In the back of the bus, wrapped tightly in a blanket, Christophe didn't stir from the drug-induced sleep his mother had put him into. She'd struggled against the suggestion that Christophe might panic and give away their position; Caerys had finally turned the situation around and convinced her that Christophe really didn't need to see what was going to happen.

"How long will you be?" Caerys asked.

"I should be back by six," he assured her, reaching into the duffel-bag at his feet to pull out a balaclava hat and a pair of gloves.

"Quelle heure est-il?" Sophie asked.

"Just before five." Gabriel didn't look away from his preparations, quickly and systematically checking the various weapons he stored about his person. Light and Dark were strapped on last, the larger weapon wrapped in a long, silk scarf he'd promised to give to Caerys when it was all over.

"Don't draw any attention, I'll be back."

"Be careful," Sophie whispered as he placed a hand on the door-handle.

"I told you, I won't just leave you at the roadside, Sophie," he reassured her, and was out the door before they could say anything more.

The night was cold, damp, the cloud having dropped to the point where it might be considered a mist, meeting the sea-fog boiling up past Leith and the East Neuk along the Firth and spilling onto the land. Weaving its way between the hills it wrapped itself around the town. By the time he'd finished the twenty minute approach to the warehouse, visibility was down to a dozen feet or less, and only promised to get worse.

The buildings on the approach were old, dilapidated, nineteen-sixties concrete prefabs long ago abandoned even by the casual graffiti artists and glue-sniffers that had frequented it in the late eighties, and homeless that had dwelt there in the nineties.

Now they waited behind high, chain-link fences in the hope that light industry might return someday to replace the businesses that had once supported the fishing and naval ports. For now, though, in one slightly less threadbare looking bulky collection of identical walls, Gabriel sought a different industry.

Mounting the wall of the first unit in the block, he ghosted along the lip of the wall, swinging on his extended arms until he was confident he was past the first sentry, and then slowly hauled himself up. Pausing with his elbows against his stomach, just his eyes peering up the gently pitched roof, he picked out the two posted watchmen easily. Rising up further he looked around, not seeing any more, and lowered himself before continuing along the row.

His shoulders were burning by the time he reached the rickety fire-escape stub at the end of the row, but dropped onto it confidently. There was no squeak of loose metal, no rocking on rotted, rusted bolts, and he quickly swung over the barrier and hung beneath the platform as steps approached the door to investigate the sound. Someone moved about above him for a moment before disappearing back into the warmth inside.

Sloppy. He thought to himself, and dropped the remaining four or five yards to the floor of the compound, now inside the chain link fence. The rest of his circuit identified the other five watch-stations, the fifteen men assigned to them, and he even managed to deduce where his father's troops would come from when they made their own assault.

With a little under three minutes of his own, self-imposed time-frame left, he dropped from a different building into a covered loading bay outside of the chain-link fence, and drifted away into the darkness, confident that neither Marduk's nor Gilgamesh's troops were aware he'd been there.

The cloaked figure in the broad hat that slipped out of the darkness to follow him had no intentions of telling either group.

Abbeyview Heights Industrial Estate, Dunfermline, December 10^th

"He's back." Caerys relaxed a little, letting the magic go that had been hiding the vehicle while Gabriel took the amulet.

"Are you..." Sophie began, and the door at her slide opened with a burst of cold air as Gabriel hopped up into place. "Sure?"

"Sure of what?" he asked, and Sophie waved the question away.

"Did you find what you expected?" Caerys asked.

"Pretty much. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I can be," she assured him, her face pale and her hands starting to tremble.

"Let's get going then."

"What do you plan to do?" Sophie asked, as he manoeuvred his way into the front seat to drive.

"The watchmen appear pretty lax, I'll just circle round the compound and take them down one by one."

"They're likely to be just hired men," Caerys pointed out. "Inside the shrine it'll be different."

"We'll see."

"No, Gabriel, please." Caerys scrambled into the front as well, kicking the van out of gear once on the way. "If you try to sneak in there, they'll get you. They're expecting that, you have to do something different."

"Make an entrance, you mean?" He considered it.

"My father's expecting your father — his power will be spread thin to detect intruders and target them. If you surprise them, do something unexpected... they aren't soldiers, like your father's men. They need more direction. If you can surprise them they may never regroup."

He considered that for a moment, mulling possibilities in his mind. "The problem is, tactically speaking, one person going up against many is best served by hit and run tactics, deception and stealth."

"Maybe, if everyone's got the same weapons," Caerys argued. "You don't. My father's powers are subtle and extensive, but he has very little in the way of directly offensive magic — he'll move, he'll hide."

"And the people with him?" Gabriel reminded her.

"They'll only have subsets of his abilities, remember. He can't imbue them with powers he doesn't have."

"Do none of them have abilities of their own?"

"No. My father has his magic, and Lilith has defected to work for your father. They have the abilities he's given them, and some magical enhancements, but they'll be spread thin."

"How has he survived this long?"

"He doesn't stand and face people very often. He'll poison people, he'll assassinate key people, he'll warp their magic back upon them — that's probably what he's here for, some sort of ritual."

"Is it likely to be aimed at us?"

"More likely your father, he's been active lately, and he'll see him as more of a threat than us, I'd think."

"So... he's likely to run at the first sign of trouble?"

"Not the first sign, he'll still be reasonably sure he can win. If things go badly for him, though, he'll run." Gabriel digested that, nodded once, and then concentrated on driving until he had the van where he wanted it.

"Time to go, ladies," he whispered, and the pair of them nodded, climbing down to the floor hesitantly. Caerys clutched her mother's book tightly against her chest in both hands, knuckles white against the binding as she pulled her jacket tighter about herself. Sophie, meanwhile, draped in a long coat shuffled from foot to foot, hands wedged deeply into her pockets.

Gabriel eyed her carefully for a moment, watching the sway of the cloth as she moved, then reached out and pulled one side of the coat open. As he'd suspected, the dark, blocky bulk of the shotgun swung there from a cord. She met his eyes, briefly, and looked away before he could say anything.

"Aren't you cold?" Caerys asked, changing the subject.

"Not particularly." He shook his head, checking his own apparel. His silenced pistol was holstered at the back of his waist, Dark was strapped to his left thigh, and Light — still wrapped — was slung across his back, blade down. A more conventional knife was strapped to his right thigh, and he found himself again debating the virtue of the short-barrelled MP5.

"He'll be prepared for guns and rifles." Caerys reminded him, leaning over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. He nodded.

"Wait here, I'll be back soon."

A light breeze had arisen, breaking up the fog and mist a little, creating little pockets of visibility that could lull you into a false sense of security, but Gabriel was too professional to be distracted by that. Working by sound and his own sense of where the buildings were, he cut across the wasteland from the tree-line where he'd parked up, and scaled the building once more.

Hauling himself up to the lip of the roof, he waited until the roving guard had ambled past, then hauled himself up to perch on the edge. Two silent steps and he plunged the knife into the retreating guard's back, the other hand clamping over his face to muffle any cries.

Holding the body upright for a moment, he waited for the next form to materialise out of the mist investigating the muffled noise, and stabbed again, this time through the throat. Neither of them had their guns at the ready, just as he'd seen earlier, and he began to feel a little more confident.

In short order he stripped the buildings of their guards, then moved inside to clear out the remaining men, leaving the main warehouse isolated. He was finishing the last building when the radio on the bench crackled gently to life, someone inside finally trying to establish contact with the watchmen.

On his guard as he crept out of the building, he heard noise from the main building and made his way to the fence in the lee of the now empty flanking sites.

"Come on!" he hissed through the fence, pulling a pair of wire-cutters from the deep pocket on the back of his trousers, and opening a gap for them to enter through. Caerys slipped through easily, Sophie with a little more trouble as she uncomfortably navigated the narrow gap whilst trying not to get her gun caught.

Moving with the fog he brought them up to the side of the building, nestled into the shelter it offered against the wind, and pointed to a small, frosted window above their heads.

"When it starts, that should get blown out. You'll be able to see what's going on from there. Don't be too hasty, though." He told them, and disappeared into the darkness.

Abbeyview Heights Industrial Estate, Dunfermline, December 10^th

For ten long, nervous minutes Caerys and Sophie huddled in the dark, feeling the damp of the mist soaking through their clothes, settling in and chilling their skin, flesh, bones. Sophie was shivering hard enough that she was as worried about her chattering teeth giving them away as she was the possible rattle of metalwork from her gun.

Somewhere in the distance above them came the sound of glass smashing, and then the window above them blew out, accompanied by screams and shouting from within.

"Watch the doors, it's a diversion!" Caerys recognised her father's voice and watched a stubby gun-barrel jut out of the empty frame above them. Glad they'd heeded Gabriel's warning, she waited a few seconds more, and heard another round of explosions — louder without the glass — and felt a body slam into the wall they leant against from the inside. Watching the gun barrel slide away she hesitantly raised her head to the window, and looked in as the dust from the explosions settled.

Inside the warehouse, the décor gave proof to the mockery of the outside. Gilded metal panels lined the walls between ornamental arches and wooden screens with unfathomable scenes and symbols carved into them. A plush red carpet ran down the central aisle, and a cluster of naked men and women cavorted around a squat, ugly, black-iron altar on a raised dais. Her father stood, clutching a sceptre in one hand and a burning brand in the other over the bleeding body of a gutted pig, returning to his ritual as gun-men around the building started to turn their attention to the two pairs of doors on either side of the building.

A thunderous note sounded through the warehouse, a great ringing chime that brought all the heads up, searching for the source. A short, powerful descending scale followed, this time easily locatable as being in the rafters at the centre of the structure, and as the eyes fixed there, a figure emerged.

Clad in grey, a single ebony wing fluttering gently, Gabriel drifted downward, the gleaming white glaive laid across his arms, cradled almost like a baby.

"You did tell him to make an entrance," Sophie whispered to Caerys, crouched beside her, neither of them taking their eyes off him for a moment. The organ sound, suddenly, was joined by a crescendo of noise, a thumping guitar blasting loudly enough to shatter several of the remaining windows.