When the Angels Fell

Chapter 3: Devil's Night

Daniel was waiting for her on the corner of the street. He still wore his coat, but had straightened his hair so it hung down in soft spikes. Abigail noticed a pale scar curving down past his right eye that she didn't remember seeing last time.

Was it fresh? No, it couldn't be. It was impossible for an open wound to scar in less than a day.

'Something I know well,' Abigail thought sourly, looking down at her concealed wrists.

She wore a thick hooded jacket over her usual clothes, something her dad insisted on.

"I'll not have my daughter ill from the cold because she wasn't wearing the proper clothing," was his argument whenever she brought the matter up.

"Hey there," Daniel said, coming out from beneath the streetlight.

"Hey," Abigail replied. "What happened to your eye?"

"This?" Daniel reached up to his face and touched the scar. "Old wound"

He took her hand and she could feel the sudden heat emanating from him in vast, invisible waves. Abgail was reminded of the unnatural warmth of the statue of Gabriel and instinctiviely shivered.

Daniel must have taken the movement as a sign that she was cold, because he walked her up the street towards the line of people outside the theatre.

They joined the back of the queue and Abigail looked up at the brooding exterior of the theatre as it loomed over them against an ominous grey sky. Bringing her gaze back down to ground level, her attention was brought to the sign listing the productions of the day.

"Dr. Faustus," Abigail read.

She looked over to Daniel, who stood beside her opening and closing his hands with short, nervous movements. She chose not to comment on it, putting it down to the increasing cold.

"I didn't take you as the Jacobean play type"

"It's an Elizabethean play actually," Daniel corrected without looking at her.

Further conversation was prevented by a sudden comotion at the front of the shortening line.

"But I had my ticket!" A middle-aged woman was protesting loudly.

"That may be so, but seeing as you have yet to produce a valid ticket I can't let you in," the doorman explained, his calm tone maintained only with visible effort.

"Damn you and your valid ticket!" She shouted, trying to push past him. "I didn't pay all that money and stand out here in the cold only to be told I wasn't allowed in!"

"Security!" The doorman snapped, his patience finally worn thin.

Two solidly-built men appeared from the doorway and dragged the woman, kicking and scratching, away from the door.

"I'll see you fired for this," she spat, storming away down the street.

"Now we've got that unpleasantness sorted", the doorman sighed, his brow slick with perspiration. "Let us continue"

The line moved quickly after that.  Less than five minutes after the incident, Abigail and Daniel were stepping into the warm interior of the theatre.

Carpeted in plush red fabric, the theatre was built at the turn of the century and could hold up to five hundred people with four independent stages. The wood-panelled walls rose over forty metres to a heavily-patterned ceiling depicting scenes from plays as diverse as Hamlet and The White Devil. Two sturdy oak doorways on the ground floor opened into the theatre stages and two identical doors on the level above served the same purpose.