Seb looked up, his skin prickling. He reached for his own angel self, sent it soaring down the hallway. As he burst out into the main cathedral, he saw that most of the congregation had now escaped, but the place was full of rioters – tipping over pews, smashing windows. Several of them were battering at the locked office door with an angel statue, their auras blood-red as they yelled obscenities. Wheeling on one wing, Seb saw the wooden door start to buckle. Someone else ran up – a man shouting at the others to move aside. He pulled a gun and began firing at the door.

Seb sped back to the offices; as he merged, his human self was already lunging towards the filing cabinet. “Willow, we’ve got to go!”

She shook her head anxiously. “Wait, this file might have something – it feels important—”

Seb heard the door crash open down the hallway, the echo of shouts. “Now!” He pulled Willow bodily from the filing cabinet; she resisted for a second, hanging back to yank the file out, and then they were both running, Willow with the file clutched to her chest.

They raced back out into the narrow hallway. Around the bend, it sounded as if the rioters were ripping the paintings down from the walls and smashing them. Then came running footsteps, heading their way. Seb and Willow were already tearing down the corridor in the opposite direction, her angel flying overhead to light their way down the dim, windowless passage.

As they turned another corner, Seb saw that the fire exit he’d remembered was still there, its sign looking blessedly ordinary as it beckoned to them. He threw himself against the door’s metal bar and they spilled out into the cool twilight of a car-lined street behind the cathedral.

There was no time to be relieved – they’d burst out into another battle. Crusaders and Faithful were fighting each other in a seething mass, at least a hundred of them: fists swinging, the sticks from placards being used as weapons. Angels with enraged faces flew overhead, occasionally ducking down to rip away the life force of a Crusader. A man screamed, clutching his chest as he fell to the ground. The fighting continued around him like churning water.